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I encountered the following in a 1958 book on investing:

How has the market price of these shares responded to all this? Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as, twenty-two months ago, I indicated appeared probable?

The last part made bold is the difficulty for me.

So I can ignore the middle sentence "twenty-two months ago", and focus on

Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated appeared probable?

In this question, it seems to me that some words are missing. I can guess the meaning is

Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated (that) (it) appeared (to be) probable?

But it looks like there are several grammatical rules involved here, that the author used to omit these parts, and I can't understand the interplay of these rules.

Could you help explain the rules which allowed the author to write this question in such form?

I know it involves omitting "to be" after linking verbs such as "appear," and that you can omit "that" before complements, but why "it" can be omitted, whether after "as" or in general? or otherwise is there some other grammatical rule that I'm missing here?

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    It's grammatical. Personally, I find the indicated appeared probable string clumsy and would leave the to be in place. Even then 'to appear probable' smacks of redundancy. Avoiding the past perfect (as I had indicated) is normal where it is not absolutely unavoidable; here, inserting it changes the meaning/timeframe (and would perhaps be a necessary correction, but we can't be sure). Inserting a 'that' would be non-standard.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 12:35
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    What @EdwinAshworth said. But it's not so much that the text could benefit from a few "function words, linking verbs, etc." as that the contrived sequence / inversion is awkward. Has the price-earning ratio I indicated appeared probable twenty-two months ago continued to advance? strikes me as far easier to parse (it might be a bit better with that after ratio, but that's no biggie).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 13:31
  • I attempted an answer but am giving up because I'm doing a bad job of it. Just to point out for others, though, Tamir never suggested the sentence was invalid, and didn't ask about rewrites. The question, as I see it, is: In the sentence "I indicated [that] it appeared probable [that] the ratio would etc.," why can we omit the "that"s? and in the construction "it appeared [to be] probable," why can we omit "to be"? These ought to be easy to answer, but I'm bungling it.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 14:38
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    @Andy Bonner to be-deletion has been covered here on ELU several times. See for example John Lawler's answer here.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 14:40
  • And "that" (though it's a bit hard to get a quick answer from that page. This BBC q-a post might be more useful...)
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 14:44

2 Answers 2

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The it in your guess at the meaning of the original is a pronoun that must be used with an extraposed subject as its referent.

[That the price-earnings ratio will continue to advance] appears probable.

It appears probable [that the price-earning ratio will continue to advance].

Including the declarative content clause (that-clause) as subject would result in an ungrammatical construction.

*Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated that it would (continue to advance) appeared probable?

Including the it without the extraposed subject would lead to an ungrammatical construction as an implied one is not allowed.

*Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated it appeared probable?

With the extraposed subject included, the construction is once again grammatical, but the addition seems unnecessary.

Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated it appeared probable that it would (continue to advance)?

The best choice in respect to the omission of the embedded clause understood as subject of appeared is probably the one the author made.

An example of a similar omission would be in a how-relative clause.

I could stand up to the Republican leaders and vote how I believed was right.

I could stand up to the Republican leaders and vote how I believed it was right for me to vote.

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  • +1 for the correct analysis, although I would think the original is not terribly easy to parse. I would have written something like Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated it probably would?
    – JK2
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 at 3:24
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Simple answer

In the sentence,

Has the price-earning ratio continued to advance as I indicated appeared probable?

the it, as pronoun for price-earning ratio, can be omitted because the subject has already been mentioned. Sometimes we can omit words if they're repeating the same information. This is known as ellipsis.

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