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Before I embraced descriptive grammar it would really grind my gears when I heard, usually from someone with a US American accent, phrases like "I hate when that happens". "Hate is a transitive verb!" I would yell.

(To my knowledge it's not normal to drop it in "UK English".)

However, these days I'm more mellow. My left eye twitches but I pinch myself and remember that language evolves.

Which leads me to my questions. I've seen the dummy object eroded from phrases involving love

  • I love when you give me a kiss
    — Ordinary Alphabet: Poems by an ordinary girl, p. 107, Michelle McNair, Bloomington (Indiana): Author House.

  • I love when she screams to the audience
    — Tell Them That I Love Them: A Story of Grace and Redemption, p. 206, Angela Sanders, Euclid (Ohio): Sandstorm Publishing.

and hate

  • I hate when that happens
    — Letters to My Sister, p. 61, Maxine Oliveres, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh): Red Lead Press

  • I hate when people try to take advantage of me
    — If You Could See What I See, p. 93, Cathy Limb, New York (New York): Kensington Publishing Crop.

in "American English". Is it only dropped before a conjunction, or is it OK to drop it at other times? Is it only love and hate where it gets dropped, or are there other verbs that lose the dummy pronoun?

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  • I can't drop the it there myself. It sounds weird to me.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:48
  • Related:english.stackexchange.com/questions/134005/…
    – user 66974
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:54
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    Would you say, for example, I remember it when he arrived or I understand it why she left? I always felt the it was superfluous in such constructions from a very early age (1980s Southern California), and having trained myself not to say it, loathed [it] when others did say it.
    – choster
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 15:28
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    Yeah. I'm not sure about this question now. I think I've noticed a weirdness in UK English, not American English.
    – Matt E. Эллен
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 15:55
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    I'm guessing based on this ngram search that including the "it" is a pretty recent phenomenon. So maybe the question is: When did it become more idiomatic to write "I love it when" or "I hate it when" whereas other transitive verbs seem not to use "it."
    – RaceYouAnytime
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 21:24

2 Answers 2

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"I hate when that happens" is a transitive usage of hate. The object is the clause "when that happens".

Compare "I know he is lying", where "he is lying" is the object of the transitive know. Also "People say Roberta Flack is a great singer", where "Roberta Flack is a great singer" is the object of the transitive say.

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    Perhaps I should reverse the question, and ask why we don't turn "when that happens" into an object in the UK. Although I suppose that's unanswerable.
    – Matt E. Эллен
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 14:59
  • @MattE.Эллен Yeah, "why" questions like that are hard to answer. All we can say is, the usage seems to differ.
    – Mark Beadles
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 15:01
  • "I know he is lying" is a (perfectly acceptable) example of dropping "that".
    – Spencer
    Commented Nov 18, 2017 at 1:39
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Speaking solely from my own experience of hearing it in AmE, this is a somewhat perverse usage that entered my awareness sometime in the mid-1980s. It was used as a kind of Zeitgeist meme, and with the same kind of relish pop culture aficionados use for that sort of utterance, and I recall thinking it must have been from some sort of TV show (like the "dy-no-mite!" meme originated by actor Jimmie Walker on an American television show).

Again, to the best of my recollection it was used precisely because it was so perverse sounding. People would say it for emphasis (and for the nudge of recognition it engendered in the listener) because that hint (okay, more than a hint) of discordance, as well as for its tag-like quality. Google NGrams shows its use in print peaking around the early '90s, and its frequency even at that peak was still only around 75% that of "I hate it when that happens."

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    George Bernard Shaw, 1883: "I never said you had no heart," protested Jane ; " but I hate when you speak like a book." is an early non-American (though non-English) example.
    – Mark Beadles
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 22:54

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