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What follows expounds empirical and theoretical reasons for a basic, but frequently neglected, differentiation of the subjects of impersonal constructions. An essential difference is the syntactic distinction between a semantically void subject argument on the one hand and an expletive item for an obligatory structural subject position on the other hand. The primary source of evidence will be passive and middle constructions of intransitive verbs in Germanic and Romance languages. The obligatory preverbal subject position of SVO languages is the grammatical source of subject expletives. In the SOV and VSO clause structure, arguably, there is no obligatory VPexternal subject position and therefore no room for expletive subjects. SOV and VSO languages allow for genuinely subjectless clauses. Expletives have to be distinguished from semantically void subject pronouns. The subjects of intransitive middles, for instance, are semantically void arguments of the verb while the structural subject of an intransitive passive, as in French or in Scandinavian languages, is a nonargumental item in a structurally obligatory subject position. Semantically void subjects may be lexical or null, depending on the null-subject property of the given language. Expletive subjects cannot be null. In the linguistic reality, there is no such thing as an “empty expletive”, contrary to widely shared assumptions in the literature. Whenever analyses or descriptions of so-called impersonal constructions confuse the qualities mentioned in the title, they become inconclusive. In the linguistic reality, clauses may be genuinely subjectless or they may contain an expletive subject or a semantically void argumental subject, which, in a null subject language, is phonetically null but syntactically recoverable. What they never contain is a “null expletive subject”. An “empty expletive” is – as shall be demonstrated – a grammatical concept without factual basis. Its motivation rests on an SVObiased perspective on the clause structure of SOV and VSO

Grammar, Comparative and general --- Icelandic language --- Portuguese language --- Subjectless constructions.