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Personal Pronouns – Special Uses of IT

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Today we’ll be talking about personal pronouns, and in particular the personal pronoun it, which is used as a reference to neuter gender nouns or noun phrases, just like the pronoun he is used for masculine gender and she for feminine gender. Here are three examples with these three personal pronouns:

(masculine gender): My son is a student. He is studying math. (he refers to my son)

(feminine gender): Anne is a driver. She’s a very good driver. (she refers to Anne)

(neuter gender): The house is old. It looks pretty good, though. (it refers to the house)

Personal Pronouns May Be Used Without a Reference

But it may be also used in a non-referential way. There are five major special uses of it that I would like to mention: dummy subject, dummy object, anticipatory subject, anticipatory object and subject in cleft constructions. Let’s discuss them now one by one.

Dummy subject

We use the pronoun it as a dummy subject if there would be no subject at all otherwise. For example when we talk about the weather, like in the following example:

It is raining.

Personal Pronouns Without a Doer

A subject in general is the doer of the action. But what or who is the doer of the action in the example above? There is no explicit doer, but the sentence still needs a subject, so this is where a dummy subject comes in handy.

Some other weather examples:

It’s cold out there.

It’s too hot to jog.

We also use an empty subject when talking about time or distance, for example:

It’s almost midnight.

It’s half past seven.

It’s a long way from New York to Denver.

It’s miles away.

It’s getting dark.

Dummy object

Similarly, we use dummy objects where an object is required, but there isn’t any. This is often used in verbal idioms, like in the following examples:

She’s very sick, but I hope she’s going to make it. (here make it means survive)

Let’s move it! It’s getting late. (here move it means start going quickly)

I know it’s hard, but I’ll tough it out until it’s over. (tough it out means deal with a difficult situation by being determined and refusing to quit).

And there are many other constructions like that. They all make use of the dummy object it.

Anticipatory subject

We use it to anticipate an extraposed clause. Then it acts as the subject. Some examples:

It is hard to believe that she can speak twenty-seven languages.

It would be great to win the game.

It was quite surprising that the best student failed this simple exam.

Anticipatory object

We use it to anticipate a following object if an object is required. In the following examples it anticipates the following object clauses:

I found it hard to accept that my friend had been killed.

I’ll leave it to you to decide what to do.

Subject in cleft constructions

Finally, the pronoun it is used in cleft constructions to emphasize a particular element in the clause. Some examples:

It’s today you’re starting work at McDonald’s, right? (today is emphasized)

It was my boss who first noticed the mistake. (my boss is emphasized)

It was on that day that his sister came back from Australia. (that day is emphasized)

Other Personal Pronouns – an Exercise

As a practice exercise you can find a couple examples for each of the above cases. What about other personal pronouns? Can you use them in a similar way as well? Any examples?


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