syntactic expletive

English

Noun

syntactic expletive (plural syntactic expletives)

  1. (linguistics) A pronoun that is used at the start of a sentence or clause when the referent is not immediately known, but an argument for the verb is syntactically required.
    In the sentences "It is a hammer that is needed." and "There are hammers in the toolbox.", both "it" and "there" are syntactic expletives.

See also

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