An expletive is a word or phrase inserted into a sentence that is not needed to express the basic meaning of the sentence. It is regarded as semantically null or a place holder. Expletives are not insignificant or meaningless in all senses; they may be used to give emphasis or tone, to contribute to the meter in verse, or to indicate tense. The word "expletive" derives from the Latin word label=none: Serving to fill out or take up space. In these examples In fact and indeed are expletives: In conversation the expressions like and you know, when they are not meaningful, are expletives. The word so, used as an introductory particle, has become a common modern expletive. Oaths or profanities may be expletives, as occurs in Shakespeare:
At the start of the modern English era the use of the word "do" as an expletive came into fashion with no fixed principle guiding it. It began to appear often in phrases such as "they do hunt", and the practice was slow to fade from use. The lingering and indiscriminate use of the expletive "do" lent a point to Alexander Pope's jibe :
Expletive negation
Expletive negation is a term that originated in French language studies. It refers to a sentence construction that contains one or more negations that, from a modern perspective, seem superfluous. An example is the "double-negative" in: "Nobody never lifted a finger to help her." Expletive negation is a standard usage in Old English, and in Middle English, as in this sentence, where, from a modern perspective, "not" and the negative marker "ne" seem to be not required:
"Expletive deleted"
The popularity of the phrase "expletive deleted" derives from the Watergate hearings in the United States in the 1970s, where the phrase was used to replace profanity that occurred in the transcripts of conversations that were recorded in the White House. The use of the word expletive for a profanity did not begin in the 1970s; an early example occurs in a sermon by Isaac Barrow published in 1741.
Syntactic expletive
A syntactic expletive is a term used in formal linguistic theories. It is a term for 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. The basic meaning of the clause is made explicit after the verb. Common forms of construction for sentences that contain a syntactic expletive begin with "it is", "here is", or "there is". The expletive serves as the grammatical subject of the independent clause that it begins. In a clause like "it is raining" the referent of the pronoun "it" is not obvious, and is the subject of discussion and alternate theories among linguists. Syntactic expletives have great significance in the study of the history of languages and cross-cultural comparisons. The term is distinct from the expletives of traditional grammar in that a syntactic expletive has a particular syntactical meaning. Simple examples of syntactic expletives are the wordsit and there: Expletive, pleonastic, or dummy subjects have been crucial to syntactic argumentation. Their lack of semantic content, and their staunch grammatical aspect provide a method to explore differences between syntax and semantics.
