Sentence analysis for "Who would it benefit you to know, or what type of person would it benefit you to know to grow your business"

Question

On a rather big (and I guess copy-edited) blog by Chris Brogan, I read this:

Who would it benefit you to know, or what type of person would it benefit you to know to grow your business.

And I cannot fathom it. I do understand the meaning out of context but I am at loss when it comes to analyzing the whole thing. I guess the "normalized" version would be

It benefits me to do something

which is incredibly German-sounding to my ears. If this is the underlying phrasing then I still don't understand the function of "it" in the question.

• What grammatical function does the "it" have? Is it an object or a subject or a predicate nominative or even an explicative? And also,
• Shouldn't the question word be "whom"?

Answer 1

This sentence could stand as a perfect counterexample to those descriptivists (and they are many, even on this site) who say that whom no longer has a place in English. It is often considered 'too formal', and who is used to replace it indiscriminately. Often, as here, this makes it impossible to tell at first sight whether the pronoun stands for a subject or an object, or even to work out what the intended meaning is. But hey, at least it doesn't sound stuffy, right?

A few other points

• Yes, it benefits you to do something is a normal phrase. It was becoming archaic, until it was taken up by marketing people. The 'It' is often called a dummy it; see, for example, this.
• Grow, in this sense of 'expand', is not wrong, but it grates on many ears, including mine.
• The author has left out a question mark.

• Inserting 'in order' before 'to grow' would be clearer and avoid the unfortunate echo in know to grow.

• And any sentence that requires this sort of analysis to make sense of is deeply unkind to the reader, and makes me, at least, suspect the author's communication skills.

Answer 2

It is a dummy subject when it points forward to a to... phrase as in your example.

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It benefits me to do something.

This is indeed the intended basic construction, as you say, or the sentence would be meaningless. As to whether it sounds too German, I'll skip that question for now; but I agree that the original sentence is ugly in any case.

It benefits me to know people.

It gives me great pleasure to announce Lady Ashton.

It suits you to arrive early.

It suits you, to arrive early.

It suits you, arriving early.

In all of these examples, the answer to what benefits me?, what gives me great pleasure?, what suits you? is not only it, but also the to... infinitive. You could rephrase it as to know / knowing people benefits me, etc. The reason is that the to... infinitival phrase has a very strong connection to the subject of the main verb.

Some would analyse to... as the true subject. Others would say it is the subject and to... an appositional phrase to it. In other words, the phrase modifies it and expands on it. For comparison, apposition to the subject can also be observed in sentences of this type:

Her mother likes you, the woman in yellow.

In sentences of the type it... to... as in your example, a comma is not normally written. But it is possible, and it even becomes almost mandatory when you replace the infinitive with a gerund, as in it suits you, arriving early. A comma is a sign of apposition here.

The word it is called a dummy subject, because it functions syntactically as the subject, but it is almost without semantic content and merely serves to point forward to the to... phrase.

It should indeed be whom in formal language, since it is the object of know; but who is also often used instead of whom in somewhat less formal language.

Answer 3

“Who would it benefit you to know, or what type of person would it benefit you to know to grow your business."

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I'm a AmE speaker, and I find nothing wrong with that sentence. (Except maybe it could use a question mark, but that will probably depend on the context.)

As I said earlier, via a quick comment onto the OP's post, I think the example sentence is fine and is often the type of sentence that results after editing. You'll find sentences like that in printed books and magazines, and in novels, a lot.

There isn't too much going on, imo, as I didn't have much difficulty in parsing it grammatically, nor in figuring out its meaning.

Let's look at it grammatically, well, at least for a few steps. Here's the original:

• 1.) Who would it benefit you to know, or what type of person would it benefit you to know to grow your business.

The top-level clauses are in the form of interrogative clauses. Let's fiddle with them a bit in order to get similar clauses which have the interrogative words and phrases in situ:

• 2.) It would benefit you to know [who], or it would benefit you to know [what type of person] to grow your business.

Each of those coordinate clauses are quite normal and unsurprising:

• It would benefit you to know who?

• It would benefit you to know what type of person to grow your business?

It is also quite common to often prefer the nominative "who" over the accusative "whom" when that "who/whom" is fronted. Thus,

• Who would it benefit you to know?

I don't think you'd want a more in depth grammatical analysis of the structure of your example sentence. But if you do, go ahead and ask and I'm sure someone will help you out.

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EDITED: To answer your question about the function of "it" -- The "it" in each of those clauses is the grammatical subject.