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expl: expletive

This relation captures expletive or pleonastic nominals. These are nominals that appear in an argument position of a predicate but which do not themselves satisfy any of the semantic roles of the predicate. There is further discussion and examples on the universal dependency page (u-dep/expl).

C' est la seule manière de réussir \n It' s the only way to succeed
expl(manière, C')

In Romance languages, pronouns in prominal verbs which do not have a semantic role are marked as expl such as se in se douter. In French the expl relation is also used for euphonic elements, such as l’ in e.g. et que l’on retrouve or t in a-t-il reçu mon email?

Note that currenlty expletives are not annotated consistently in the French treebank.


Treebank Statistics (UD_French)

This relation is universal.

622 nodes (0%) are attached to their parents as expl.

541 instances of expl (87%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 1.41800643086817.

The following 19 pairs of parts of speech are connected with expl: fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/PRON (267; 43% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/PART (161; 26% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/PRON (54; 9% instances), fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/SCONJ (46; 7% instances), fr-pos/PROPN-fr-pos/ADP (24; 4% instances), fr-pos/NOUN-fr-pos/PRON (18; 3% instances), fr-pos/NOUN-fr-pos/ADP (11; 2% instances), fr-pos/ADJ-fr-pos/ADP (10; 2% instances), fr-pos/ADJ-fr-pos/PRON (8; 1% instances), fr-pos/NOUN-fr-pos/SCONJ (7; 1% instances), fr-pos/ADJ-fr-pos/SCONJ (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/ADV-fr-pos/PRON (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/VERB-fr-pos/ADP (3; 0% instances), fr-pos/PROPN-fr-pos/PRON (2; 0% instances), fr-pos/ADV-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/ADV-fr-pos/SCONJ (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/NUM-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/NUM-fr-pos/PRON (1; 0% instances), fr-pos/PRON-fr-pos/ADP (1; 0% instances).

# visual-style 9	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 9	fgColor:white
# visual-style 10	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 10	fgColor:white
# visual-style 10 9 expl	color:blue
1	Il	il	PRON	_	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	n'	ne	PART	_	_	6	neg	_	_
3	est	être	VERB	_	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	pas	pas	ADV	_	_	6	neg	_	_
5	aussi	aussi	ADV	_	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	anxieux	anxieux	ADJ	_	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	qu'	que	SCONJ	_	_	10	mark	_	_
8	il	il	PRON	_	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	y	y	PRON	_	_	10	expl	_	_
10	paraît	paraître	VERB	_	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
11	.	.	PUNCT	_	_	6	punct	_	_

# visual-style 3	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 3	fgColor:white
# visual-style 4	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 4	fgColor:white
# visual-style 4 3 expl	color:blue
1	C'	ce	PRON	_	Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Dem	4	nsubj	_	_
2	est	être	VERB	_	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	l'	l'	PART	_	_	4	expl	_	_
4	une	un	PRON	_	Gender=Fem|Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
5	de	de	ADP	_	_	8	case	_	_
6	les	le	DET	_	Definite=Def|Gender=Fem|Number=Plur	8	det	_	_
7	trois	trois	NUM	_	_	8	nummod	_	_
8	banlieues	banlieue	NOUN	_	Gender=Fem|Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	_
9	où	où	PRON	_	PronType=Rel	12	nmod	_	_
10	ce	ce	DET	_	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing	11	det	_	_
11	trafic	trafic	NOUN	_	Gender=Masc|Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	domine	dominer	VERB	_	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	_	_	4	punct	_	_

# visual-style 3	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 3	fgColor:white
# visual-style 1	bgColor:blue
# visual-style 1	fgColor:white
# visual-style 1 3 expl	color:blue
1	Qu'	que	PRON	_	_	0	root	_	_
2	est	être	VERB	_	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	cop	_	_
3	-ce	ce	PRON	_	Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Dem	1	expl	_	_
4	qui	qui	PRON	_	_	3	mwe	_	_
5	va	aller	AUX	_	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	augmenter	augmenter	VERB	_	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl:relcl	_	_
7	?	?	PUNCT	_	_	1	punct	_	_


expl in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]