neuterimpersonal

Neuterimpersonal is a term used in linguistic typology to describe a subset of impersonal clauses in which the grammatical subject is neuter or is a dummy pro-form that signals non-referential meaning. In these constructions, the clause conveys information about a phenomenon, event, or state without asserting an agent or participant.

In languages with grammatical gender, the expletive subject that supports a neuter impersonal clause often bears neuter agreement or pronoun form. For example, Dutch uses het as a neuter pronoun in weather expressions such as Het regent (It is raining). German uses Es in Es regnet for the impersonal weather clause. In languages without grammatical gender, such as English, the same function is fulfilled by a non-referential dummy subject like it, which has no semantic content of its own.

Typical domains for neuterimpersonal sentences include weather expressions, time expressions, and other phenomena that lack an intentional agent. The construction is part of the broader category of impersonal constructions, but it is distinguished by the presence of a neuter or neuter-associated dummy subject rather than a referential noun phrase or overt agent.

Linguists study neuterimpersonal clauses to understand subjecthood, expletive usage, and how languages encode experience or environmental phenomena without participants. The terminology and exact criteria can vary across linguistic traditions, and some researchers describe the same phenomena with related labels such as neuter expletive subject or impersonal constructions.

See also: impersonal construction, expletive subject, weather verb, dummy pronoun.