A presentative, or presentational, is a word or a syntactic structure which presents, or introduces, an entity, bringing it to the attention of the addressee. Typically, the entity thus introduced will serve as the

topic Topic, topics, TOPIC, topical, or topicality may refer to: Topic / Topics * Topić, a Slavic surname * ''Topics'' (Aristotle), a work by Aristotle * Topic (chocolate bar), a brand of confectionery bar * Topic (DJ), German musician * Topic (g ...

of the subsequent discourse. For example, the construction with "there" in the following English sentence is a presentative: ''There appeared a cat on the window sill.'' In

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, one of major uses of the words ''voici'' and ''voilà'' is presentative, as in the following example: However, the most common presentative in

is the ''(il) y a'' formula (from verb ''avoir'' ‘have’), as in the following sentence: Similarly to French ''il y a'', in

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

the existential verb ''yǒu'' (have) is often used as a presentative to introduce new entities into discourse: In

Maybrat Maybrat may refer to the following topics from Southwest Papua, Indonesia: * Maybrat language * Maybrat people * Maybrat Regency Maybrat Regency is a regency of Southwest Papua Province of Indonesia. It has an area of , and had a population of 33, ...

, a likely language isolate of West Papua, there is a dedicated presentative prefix ''me-'' which combines with demonstratives. It contrasts with other prefixes like ''pe-'' (forming adverbs, "there") or ''re-'' and ''we-'' (for attributives, "''this'' man"). This contrast is illustrated in the following three examples with the demonstrative ''-to'', which is used for non-masculine referents close to the speaker: Special word order configurations can also be used to introduce foregrounded entities into discourse, that is, to realise a presentational function. This is the case of “inverted” sentences, where the subject of SV(O) languages appears in post-verbal position. In the following spoken Chinese sentence, the agent of the motion verb ''lái'' (come), which usually occupies the preverbal position, occurs after the verb because it denotes a discourse-new entity: A subtype of inverted sentence is called locative inversion since in many languages the preverbal position is filled with a locative expression. English (especially written English) has this kind of structure: ''In a little white house lived two rabbits.'' ''In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.''

References

{{Reflist Syntactic entities