Tags · Structure Expletive subject A contentless element holding the subject slot: English there, French il. Topics with this tag Pattern How do languages say “there is”? “The water is in the river” takes the water as given and tells you where it is. “There is water in the river” reverses that: the river is the setting and the water is the news. Saying that something exists therefore reuses the machinery for saying where it is, and languages differ in how much they change along the way — some leave the locational predicate untouched, some add a placeholder subject, some borrow the possessive verb, and some keep a predicate for existence alone. The choice often splits by animacy and by number. ExistenceLocationPossessionSyncretism +3 Existence → More in this facet Word order 2Adposition 3Case marking 1Syncretism 4Nominal classification 1Colexification 3Suppletion 2Negative concord 2Oblique marking 3Topic marking 1Multiverb construction 2Valency change 1Auxiliary verb 2
