Existential clause

The use of such clauses can be considered analogous to existential quantification in predicate logic, which is often expressed with the phrase "There exist(s)...".

Some languages have a different verb for that purpose: Swedish finnas has Det finns pojkar på gården, literally "It is found boys on the yard".

Some languages use the verb have; for example Serbo-Croatian U dvorištu ima dječaka is literally "In the yard has boys".

In English, existential clauses usually use the dummy subject construction (also known as expletive) with there (infinitive: there be), as in "There are boys in the yard", but there is sometimes omitted when the sentence begins with another adverbial (usually designating a place), as in "In my room (there) is a large box."

Hungarian Van egy halam "(There) is a fish-my" (for "I have a fish") and Turkish İki defterim var "two notebook-my (there) is" (for "I have two notebooks").