All Questions
Tagged with dummy-it syntactic-analysis
11 questions
14
votes
2
answers
4k
views
'I think IT unlikely that our team can win'. <--Is IT the object?
We think it unlikely that our inexperienced team can win a single > game this season.
Is "it" the direct object? If it is, what is the function of the noun clause "that our ...
- 259
2
votes
1
answer
118
views
"What is it(,) to be a hero?"
My friend and I have gotten into a rather passionate debate about whether Karen Paige's monologue at the end of season two of Daredevil was written in a grammatically correct fashion.
On screen, we ...
- 23
12
votes
4
answers
2k
views
How to distinguish it-cleft and extraposition? 'It was Ben that found it' v 'It was clear that Ben found it'
I have a question about it-cleft and extraposition.
For example the two sentences:
It was in the apartment that Ben found something interesting -- a mouse eating cheese.
It was obvious that whenever ...
- 165
3
votes
1
answer
120
views
reversing extraposition
Let’s assume we have this sentence:
It was the invention of the hand-held calculator that
provided the original technology for the present
generation of small but powerful comput...
- 35
1
vote
1
answer
102
views
omission of semantic subject
Toni Morrison began writing when she was in college, but she did not produce anything good enough to publish for many years. Her troubled marriage, divorce, and life as a single mother made it even ...
- 11
3
votes
2
answers
158
views
What's the underlying grammatical structure of this sentence with three instances of "it" and two of "being"?
I just encountered the following sentence in The Oxford Guide to Style (p. 161) and could not figure out its structure:
Since it⁽¹⁾ is being presented as a direct quotation it⁽²⁾ is treated as one, ...
- 677
2
votes
3
answers
377
views
What is "it" in the following sentence: It is clear that Bob likes doughnuts
I am very confused. Unless I am mistaken, I know "it" has to be a noun of some sort, but I am unable to figure out what noun "it" is referring to.
What is "it" in the following sentence:
It is ...
- 208
4
votes
3
answers
882
views
Personal pronoun - Using 'it' when introducing a person
On the NPR radio program Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (http://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me/) Peter Sagal introduces the week's panelists using 'it's,' as in "She'll be performing Friday at ...
- 43
2
votes
1
answer
215
views
Inexplicable 'it'
I have myself used and been OK with it in sentences like:
What is it that you're doing?
What is it that it means?
But now I can't quite understand why it is necessary here.
Also a very ...
- 628
0
votes
4
answers
3k
views
"Makes them difficult to simulate" vs "makes it difficult to simulate them"
Which statement is correct?
The complexity of these systems makes them difficult to simulate on computers.
The complexity of these systems makes it difficult to simulate them on computers.
- 103
3
votes
4
answers
467
views
It is an existential question
A question on another site asks, I have a laptop ... Now I am trying to install Windows 7 and it shows a message saying "Driver not found".
Whereupon a commenter asks, What is the "it" that shows ...
- 37.6k