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 Mon Nov 27, 2006 11:24 am It |
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I like your use of 'cherish', Haihao! Did you also nurture your doubts? 
The pronoun 'it' often refers to nothing in particular, as in your phrases or in the following examples:
Who is it? - it's Haihao.
It's raining.
It's Monday today.
It's getting cold. |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2702
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| Mon Nov 27, 2006 16:12 pm More questions about 'it' |
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| Haihao wrote: | 1. hit it off (with)
2. have it off (or away)
3. have it out with
What is the sense or realm of 'it' in the above phrases respectively? |
In these expressions the word "it" is what we call a "dummy pronoun". A dummy is a cheap statue of a person, like the ones you see in the department store. It has no soul or life in it. A department store dummy is an empty figure to display clothes. A dummy pronoun is just an empty pronoun that is there to hold the place of the subject or object when there is no logical subject or object in the sentence. That's also what you see in Conchita's examples. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4159
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Mon Nov 27, 2006 18:32 pm More questions about 'it' |
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'Dummy pronoun' is a useful expression but sometimes there *is* an actual subject.
It is Monday today ... 'It' = the current day of the week.
It is getting cold ..... 'It' = the surrounding environment.
In Haihao's examples, the sentence parts are all idioms and 'it' doesn't have a specific meaning divorced from the entire construct.
Hit it off = to commence a relationship in an immediately positive way.
Have it off = to have sexual relations (British usage mainly)
Have it out = to finally confront a difficult and fairly longstanding source of conflict or disagreement |
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Pond969
You can meet me at english-test.net
Joined: 17 Nov 2006
Posts: 99
Location: Canada
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| Mon Nov 27, 2006 18:52 pm More questions about 'it' |
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| Pond969 wrote: | 'Dummy pronoun' is a useful expression but sometimes there *is* an actual subject.
It is Monday today ... 'It' = the current day of the week.
It is getting cold ..... 'It' = the surrounding environment. |
So you would actually say to someone, "The current day of the week is Monday."? Or, "The surrounding environment is getting cold."?
Of course not.
If the pronoun "it" actually had those meanings in those sentences, people would actually use those sentences, but they don't.
And what about, "It is raining."? There's no word or phrase that you can sensibly replace "it" with. You could never say, "The sky is raining," or "The clouds are raining," and especially not, "The weather is raining." "It" in that sentence is simply what is called an expletive subject, or in linguists' slang a "dummy subject". It is there to hold the place of the subject so that the verb can have a subject to receive person and number from.
And how about this one:
"The children are hard to control."
"It is hard to control the children."
You can't argue that "it" in the second sentence indicates "the children", because number is wrong, and there's nothing else that could sensibly replace it. "The children" has simply been moved from the subject position into the object position of an infinitive phrase, and "it" is placed there to fill the position and allow the verb "be" to have person and number.
The same thing happens many languages. In languages where it doesn't happen, they usually just have a null subject in such situations. Then when you press people and ask them what is raining or what is hard, they'll say "it". |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4159
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:57 am More questions about 'it' |
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Jamie... of course,as a native speaker of English, I would not say "The current day of the week is Monday."? ... But that is EXACTLY what I would mean by using the 'it' to refer to that which is so obviously the actual subject of the sentence (if you take the trouble to analyze it rather than saying it, in effect, refers to nothing).
Also... if you look again, you will see that I did not adress the 'It is raining' example and I made no claim about it. But, since you press the issue... doesn't the sky, in fact, rain water down upon us?
In any event... I did not dispute the notion of a dummy subject; just that the dummy can *sometimes* be described in terms of an actual subject. |
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Pond969
You can meet me at english-test.net
Joined: 17 Nov 2006
Posts: 99
Location: Canada
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| Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:10 am More questions about 'it' |
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| Pond969 wrote: | | In any event... I did not dispute the notion of a dummy subject; just that the dummy can *sometimes* be described in terms of an actual subject. |
By actual subject you mean what is referred to as the logical subject. "It" in those sentences is called the syntactic subject. "There" is another example of an empty syntactic subject. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4159
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:17 am More questions about 'it' |
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| Yes, I suppose I did mean the 'logical' subject. That phrase didn't occur to me. |
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Pond969
You can meet me at english-test.net
Joined: 17 Nov 2006
Posts: 99
Location: Canada
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| Word for a monk's clothes | Some questions about 'in' |
