- Existential clause
Existential clauses are clauses that 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 "finnas", as in, "Det finns pojkar på gården", which is literally "It is found boys on the yard" (or, more accurately, "It exists boys on the yard"). On the other hand, some languages do not require acopula 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 "Tá ocras orm " "There is hunger on me", or Hungarian "Van egy halam" "I have a fish" (literally "Is a fish-my"), or (also Hungarian) "Anna szép" "Anna is beautiful" (literally "Anna beautiful").
See also
*
expletive
*copula References
* Everaert, M., H. van Riemsdijk and R. Goedemans (eds.) 2006. "The Blackwell Companion to Syntax". London: Blackwell, London. [see "Existential sentences and expletive there" in Volume II]
* Graffi, G. 2001. "200 Years of Syntax: A critical survey". Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
* Milsark, G. L. 1979. "Existential Sentences in English". New York & London: Garland. [Published version of 1974 MIT Ph. D. dissertation]
* Moro, A. 1997. "The Raising of Predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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