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Expletive

SYNTAX: grammatical element having no semantic content and occurring in theta-bar positions. EXAMPLE: there in (i) and it in (ii) are expletives.

(i)  There is a man in the room
(ii) It seems that John is ill

LIT. Chomsky, N. (1993)
Chomsky, N. (1986a)
Chomsky, N. (1981)