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"It's an honour to see you."

Is it dummy "it" and is "to see you" a real subject? "To see you is an honour."

Or does "see you" function as an adverb of 'reason'? It's an honour because I see you.

ColleenV
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1 Answers1

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It's an honour to see you.

Your example is called an Extraposition construction -- one consisting of "it" as subject and the postverbal subordinate clause ("to see you") in extraposed position.

The basic (non-extraposed) equivalent has "to see you" as subject:

To see you is an honour.

Note that in Extraposition the "it" is a dummy element serving the syntactic purpose of filling the subject position; the extraposed element doesn’t give the meaning (reference) of "it" but serves simply as a semantic argument of the verb phrase.

BillJ
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    And a most everyday construction - "It is raining" being the most obvious example. What is raining? – WS2 Jan 22 '24 at 22:43
  • @WS2 Not a useful example since, unlike the OP's example, it is not a reversible extraposition construction. – BillJ Jan 23 '24 at 07:49
  • My comment refers only to the "anticipatory" or dummy "it" - as in "It's 7 o'clock", "hold it". etc. Otherwise as you point out my example is that of an entirely different sentence structure. – WS2 Jan 23 '24 at 17:46