Existential clause
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Existential clauses are clauses, which indicate only an existence. In English, they are formed with the dummy subject construction (also known as expletive) with "there", e.g. "There are boys in the yard". Many languages do not require a dummy subject, e.g. Finnish, where the sentence Pihalla on poikia is literally "On the yard is boys". Some languages have a different verb for this purpose, e.g. Swedish finns as in Det finns pojkar på gården, which is literally "It is found boys on the yard". On the other hand, some languages do not require a copula at all, and sentences analogous to "In the yard boys" are used.
Possession or being under influence of something may also be indicated by existential clauses, e.g. Irish "There is hunger on me", or Hungarian Van egy halam "I have a fish" (literally "Is a fish-my").
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Everaert, M. - van Riemsdijk, H - Goedemans, R. (eds) 2006 The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Volumes I-V, Blackwell, London: see "existential sentences and expletive there" in Volume II
- Graffi, G. 2001 200 Years of Syntax. A critical survey, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
- Moro, A. 1997 The raising of predicates. Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
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