Also found in: Thesaurus, Encyclopedia. ex·ple·tive (ĕk′splĭ-tĭv) n. 1. An exclamation or oath, especially one that is profane, vulgar, or obscene. 2. a. A word or phrase that does not contribute any meaning but is added only to fill out a sentence or a metrical ...
The meaning of EXPLETIVE is a syllable, word, or phrase inserted to fill a vacancy (as in a sentence or a metrical line) without adding to the sense; especially : a word (such as it in 'make it clear which you prefer') that occupies the position of the s
The sentence could be changed to say, "There are mice in the house." This is an example of an "existential-there sentence." The word there takes a place in the sentence, but it has no meaning. Here is one way to look at ...
argue as well that this deletion can be understood straightforwardly as motivated by Jespersen's (1917) observation that negatives tend to occur as early as possible in a sentence. Before doing these things, however, it should be mentioned that the account given here is not meant to hold ...
judge sentenced them to three years in prison, but suspended the sentence. Suspended the sentence! They went free that very day! I stood in the courtroom like a fool. Those two bastards, they smiled at me. —Godfather: Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you ...
One of the things that I try to learn whenever I go to a new place where English is not the main language, I make sure that I memorise at least five words – hello, goodbye, please, thank you and beer. And then I use combinations of those to make a two word sentence!
In this paper, we propose a method of syncopating prosodic phrases in a sentence based on the pause rule of Chinese empty words in text_to_speech. 本文提出在文语转换系统中 ,基于汉语虚词的停顿规则切分句子的韵律短语 ,并根据人们感知停顿的规律 ,以及停顿的静音时长与自然度的关系 ,设置恰当的韵...