1

These are the relevant sentences below.

  • It is raining, It is rainy, sunny, cloudy.
  • It is difficult for me to understand.
  • It is easy for you to say.
  • It is essential that you have some experience.
  • It is critical that the U.S. is seen as a desirable ally to populations, as opposed to political representatives.

As we know, those "it" don't contribute any meaning to the sentences, and we can rearrange the sentences above to "that you have some experience is essential" and "that the U.S. is seen as a desirable ally to populations, as opposed to political representatives is critical," but I know that most of the English speakers don't like to start the sentences with "big head, that-clause."

So, this is my question. Even though "it" doesn't have any meaning, why do you guys use the meaningless word while bothering to rearrange them, and why do English speakers prefer to start sentences with "it" to starting with "that-clause"?

Laurel
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  • In the second one, it could refer to the passage or subject that the speaker finds difficult. Apart from that, the only reason is 'that's how the language works'. – Kate Bunting Oct 07 '22 at 15:28
  • The first example(s) are "Ambient It", which provides subjects for distances, weather, etc. (it depends on the predicate, like most things). The rest are all examples of Extraposition, which moves a heavy subject to the end and leaves an it behind. These are rules of English; there is no "why". – John Lawler Oct 07 '22 at 20:57

1 Answers1

2

It provides structure.

For the first bullet, there's no way to rearrange the sentences. Instead of just shouting out "raining!" we can say a fully fledged sentence which includes both a subject and a verb: it is raining!

The other sentences all share a different structure. Each one of them starts with "it is adjective" and is followed by an object complement clause (which in your rewrites becomes the subject). This is extraposition, which, as John Lawler explains, makes the sentence easier to parse:

Extraposition is a construction that takes a sentence with a "heavy" subject complement clause […] and "moves" the subject clause to the end of the sentence (where it's more comfortable, since English is right-branching), and leaves a dummy it behind to fool us into thinking that the sentence still starts with a noun phrase subject.

Laurel
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