French Grammar - Existential Clauses

Existential Clauses

In French, the equivalent of the English existential clause "there is" is expressed with il y a, literally "it there has." The verb may be conjugated to indicate tense, but always remains in the third person singular. For example:

• « Il y a deux bergers et quinze moutons dans le pré. » - "There are two shepherds and fifteen sheep in the meadow."
• « Il y aura beaucoup à manger. » - "There will be a lot to eat."
• « Il y aurait deux morts et cinq blessés dans l'accident. » - "There appears to have been (lit. would be) two dead and five injured in the accident." (as in news reporting)
• « Il n'y avait personne chez les Martin. » - "There was nobody at the Martins' home."

This construction is also used to express the passage of time since an event occurred, like the English ago or it has been:

• « Je l'ai vu il y a deux jours. » - "I saw him two days ago."
• « Il y avait longtemps que je ne l'avais pas vu. » - "It had been a long time since I had seen him."
• « Le langage d’il y a cent ans est très différent de celui d’aujourd’hui. » - "The language/usage of one hundred years ago is very different from that of today."

In informal speech, the dummy subject pronoun il is typically dropped, as in:

• Y a deux bergers et quinze moutons dans le pré.
• Y aura beaucoup à manger.
• Y avait personne chez les Martin.
• Je l'ai vu y a deux jours.