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For example, "There is a God" asserts the existence of a God, but "There is a pen on the desk" asserts the presence or existence of a pen in a particular place. Existential clauses can be modified like other clauses in terms of tense, negation, interrogative inversion, modality, finiteness, etc. For example, one can say "There was a God ...
For example, English uses a possessive clitic, 's; a preposition, of; and adjectives, my, your, his, her, etc. Predicates denoting possession may be formed either by using a verb (such as the English have) or by other means, such as existential clauses (as is usual in languages such as Russian). Some languages have more than two possessive classes.
Looking at existential sentences, in all languages, they are understood to belong to a grammatically distinct construction, which is utilized to express existential positions. Cleft-sentences in English contain existential sentences that have a dummy there as a subject, be as a main verb, and an NP in the post-verbal complement position.
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
The language distinguishes three basic clause types: equational, existential/locative, and voice-marked. Equational clauses have either a noun, a proform, or a non-verbal phrase in predicate position. Existential and locative clauses are respectively headed by an existential operator or the locative copula ʔisaj 'be at'. Both clause types take ...
Identificational clauses are used to present an object within a particular space. These are formed identically to existential clauses, followed by the addition of one of a set of suffixes -o, -no, and -ce, which correspond directly to the deictic prefixes a-, no-and ce-: karo-re-o "here / this is a fish".
As an existential clause with the verb olla (to be) to express possession; This is the Finnish way to express the English verb to have Meillä on koira. = We have a dog. ('on our (possession, responsibility, etc.) is dog') Expressing the instrumental use of something; Possible English meanings of with, by or using Hän meni Helsinkiin junalla.
In positive existential clauses, modification of the head noun or a fronted topic must be present to construct these clauses. In contrast, for negative existential clauses, there is no clause initial topic slot and the subject Noun Phrase can be solely constituted by the head noun. [23] This construction is demonstrated in the below example.