Hot answers tagged dummy-it
40
This particular it is a Dummy Subject pronoun, Distance it; the construction requires a locative of some sort and estimates the extent of some stretch of (perhaps metaphorical) landscape.
It's 31 miles as the crow flies from Bellingham to Mt. Baker.
It's a long way to Tipperary.
It's just corn out there, as far as the eye can see.
In the quoted sentence ...
13
Definitions for it in my Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary include:
2a used as an expletive subject of an
impersonal verb that expresses a
simple condition or an action without
implied reference to an agent about
the weather ... or time.
It is raining or It is two o'clock are examples of 2a.
2b used as an expletive subject in other ...
10
It's called a dummy it, and according to Wikipedia it's used "when a particular verb argument (or preposition) is nonexistent (it could also be unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise not to be spoken of directly), but when a reference to the argument (a pronoun) is nevertheless syntactically required."
8
Actually, it's not possible to answer this question in its present form because there is no context.
As is customary is used in one type of sentence,
and
As it is customary is used in two other types of sentences.
Without full sentences, there's no telling what the second phrase means. Let me illustrate in these sentences about military funerals:
...
8
Nothing.
In some languages, a subject is always present in the sentence, even when conceptually there is no subject. English is one of them, as well as French ("il pleut" for "it's raining").
In other languages, like Portuguese for example, you don't use any word for the subject when it doesn't exist. We say "chove" (just the verb) for "it's raining".
8
A sentence that starts with
It is hard to tell
and continues with a tensed embedded question object complement clause like
what would have occurred if [something ...]
is an example of what's called Extraposition in English. Extraposition is a construction that takes a sentence with a "heavy" subject complement clause, like
What would have ...
8
That sentence is not using the "existential 'it'" that's frowned upon; it's just using an ordinary, unexceptionable feature of English grammar.
The "existential 'it'" that's frowned upon is the it that can be replaced by there; see e.g. http://www.odlt.org/ballast/existential_it.html, which gives the example of "It was nothing I could do" meaning "there was ...
7
Yes the "it" refers to something concrete. Exactly what is not entirely clear, but ambiguity is not the same as existential. The questioner is probably referring to the laptop, Windows 7, the installation process or a similarly nebulous concept (Sorry David Schwartz!). The concept is only nebulous if you understand the detail and know that there are ...
6
As Neil and you have shown in the comments, you're not using the right construction here. You are trying to use it as a dummy subject, to be picked up by to make clear. But that is only possible in English with words that cannot take an infinitive themselves:
It's better to make these issues clear.
Here, the dummy subject it is picked up by the subject ...
6
It most certainly can be attributed to something in particular.
"It" could be a dialog box that pops up during the install.
"It" could be a line of text, before the installer has gone into a graphical mode.
This it is ambiguous, but not existential. It could mean the laptop, Windows 7 -- two nouns that appear in the quotation -- or any number of implied ...
6
Even though I'm not able to describe this in grammatical terms, I'll try to give you a "feeling".
We don't refer to the turtles themselves, so we're not interested in their numbers. We're interested just in the fact that there are turtles, in other words the concept of turtles. You could say "But, there are turtles all the way down!", but not they.
"It's" ...
5
You might call it ellipsis, but I don't think this is the simplest analysis possible. I'd rather put to think in the category of verbs that can have an object complement, like find, consider, call, etc. The words it and strange are a red herring, non-essential.
Did she think his manners uncouth?
Do you find the house depressing?
I consider him ...
5
"..whose job is to..." indicates that you're talking about a primary purpose of the person's job, whereas "...whose job it is to..." doesn't necessarily mean it's the primary purpose of their job (though it can be) but just that performing that particular task is that person's responsibility.
For example, in the case of the window-washers, if their ...
5
The version with it is the one most style guides will probably recommend. The other version is also acceptable, but it is probably considered less formal and less traditional by most. You will probably hear that one more often in casual speech.
To analyse the sentence, it helps if we transform the relative clause into a main clause and see how it works ...
4
Well, the short answer is that it does not matter. The widely accepted explanation is that the “it” in “it is raining” does not refer to anything.
If you are curious, the verb “rain” is sometimes used with a subject such as the sky and clouds. The Oxford English Dictionary (the link requires subscription) gives many examples of this usage from Old English ...
4
The season is the yearly period in which a certain activity is best performed for whatever reason, usually something that depends on climate and natural seasons. Cf. the hunting season, the asparagus season. The blueberry season is when blueberries are ripe for the picking.
The height of the season is the very best point within this period to pick ...
4
"It" doesn't refer to anything here. It's just a stand-in for the subject. "It" is the noun of the sentence, but it is not behaving as a traditional referent.
Standard English syntax requires a subject and a verb in each sentence, but some ideas become bogged down by this. To say for example, "The sky is raining," in English is obvious. However, English has ...
4
In this context, on means to put on, and off means will be off and away, while the word it is used as a dummy pronoun rather than as a referential pronoun.
Thus, in the phrase "...it’ll be on with the old Invisibility Cloak and off to find out...", it is a dummy subject, such that "it’ll be on" stands in for "what I will do is to put on".
The upshot: "... ...
4
Clearly, they both mean the same thing, but they would be used on different occasions. If someone said to you ‘What are you doing for your birthday tomorrow?’ you might reply, with a steely look, ‘My birthday was yesterday.’ On the other hand, if someone said to you ‘Hey, how come you’ve got all those presents?’ then an appropriate reply would be ‘It was my ...
4
I think this particular it is the "existential it".
In this context, where they're effectively talking about the "universal backdrop" within/above which our world exists, it seems to me the same as the "everything, but nothing in particular" referrenced when we say "It's raining", or "It's always women {who do something}".
4
Both are correct, and it may help to think of them in terms of the statements that answer them.
The simpler form "What day is today?" is answered by "Today is X"
The more common "What day is it today?" is answered by "It is X today", where "it" is a pleonastic pronoun.
3
I think you are confusing the words suffice and satisfy. Suffice is an intransitive verb meaning to be enough, so
it suffices that f(z) have a primitive in a region Ω
means that
it is enough that f(z) have a primitive in a region Ω
Satisfy in the mathematical context means to fulfill. You can say
f(z) satisfies the condition that it have a ...
3
No, you cannot say that “it suffices the condition”. That is not English.
The author is saying that “it is enough that f(z) have a primitive in a region Ω” for such and such a thing to be satisfied or hold true or apply. Something like that.
Note that we have moved into the hypothetical havens of that rarefied domain known as the subjunctive: “if ...
3
I think the problem is with the word needed. Why not try
It is necessary to make some issues regarding absences clear.
or
It is necessary to make some issues clear regarding absences.
3
It is grammatically fine to have two identical pronouns referring to separate antecedents, but it's not necessarily the best way to write:
I had to clean up the carpet, so I looked in the closet and found a vacuum cleaner. It made it easier to do.
While it's understandable and grammatically valid, it's not the clearest way to say it. It would be ...
2
If you really insist on eliminating the it:
What would have occurred if the battle had been lost is hard to tell.
But there really is nothing wrong with your sentence. This is really a dummy pronoun, which is a common feature of English. E.g.:
It's a boy! [Said by a proud new father. Notice that he doesn't say He's a boy.]
It's sunny.
...
2
I haven't read the book and I don't follow the series, so I have no idea what Crabbe, Malfoy and Goyle are, but this is how I parse the sentence:
1) It isn't a person, it's generally what will happen, the future, the universe. Like saying, "it's going to be good" or "it's the only solution."
2A) On stands for "put on the Invisibility Cloak"
2B) On can ...
2
They're both grammatically correct. They're also almost identical in meaning.
There's room for suspicion that someone whose job is to clean windows has no other job, but someone whose job it is to clean the windows might have other jobs too when not discussing cleaning windows. But that's extremely tenuous; I'd not want to make an argument based on that ...
2
It isn't referring to anything specific. It's just a grammatical construct of English, which requires that sentences have a subject. Other languages like Latin or Japanese (known as pro-drop languages) don't require an explicit subject and omit the it. You can, for example, express the same meaning simply with "pluit" (Latin).
1
It is a third-person, neuter pronoun. I had always assumed it was a definite article, so this was kind of neat to learn as a bit of nerd-trivia.
As for the first example, 'it' is associated with 'is,' so it functions as part of a to-be verb.
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