Dummy pronoun

Pronoun having no referent, only used to fulfill grammatical rules; e.g. "it" as in "it rains"

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A dummy pronoun, also known as an expletive pronoun, is a deictic pronoun that fulfills a syntactical requirement without providing a contextually explicit meaning of its referent.[1] As such, it is an example of exophora.

Dummy pronouns are used in many Germanic languages, including German and English. Pronoun-dropping languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Turkish do not require dummy pronouns.[citation needed]

A dummy pronoun is used when a particular verb argument (or preposition) is nonexistent (it could also be unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise "not to be spoken of directly") but when a reference to the argument (a pronoun) is nevertheless syntactically required. For example, in the phrase "It is obvious that the violence will continue", it is a dummy pronoun, not referring to any agent. Unlike a regular pronoun of English, it cannot be replaced by any noun phrase.[citation needed]

The term dummy pronoun refers to the function of a word in a particular sentence, not a property of individual words. For example, it in the example from the previous paragraph is a dummy pronoun, but it in the sentence "I bought a sandwich and ate it" is a referential pronoun (referring to the sandwich).

## Dummy subjects[edit]

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### Weather it[edit]

In the phrase "it is raining—", the verb to rain is usually considered semantically impersonal, even though it appears as syntactically intransitive; in this view, the required it in "it is raining" is to be considered a dummy word corresponding to precipitation in the form of liquid water.

#### Other views[edit]

However, there have been a few objections to this interpretation. Noam Chomsky has argued that the it employed as the subject of English weather verbs can control the subject of an adjunct clause, just like a "normal" subject. For example, compare:

She brushes her teeth before having a bath.

→ She brushes her teeth before she has a bath.

It sometimes rains after snowing.

→ It sometimes rains after it snows.

If this analysis is accepted, then the "weather it" is to be considered a "quasi-(verb) argument" and not a dummy word.

Some linguists such as D. L. Bolinger go even further, claiming that the "weather it" simply refers to a general state of affairs in the context of the utterance. In this case, it would not be a dummy word at all. Possible evidence for this claim includes exchanges such as:

"Was it nice (out) yesterday?"
"No, it rained."

where it is implied to mean "the local weather".

### Raising verbs[edit]

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Other examples of semantically empty it are found with raising verbs in "unraised" counterparts. For example:

It seems that John loves coffee. (Corresponding "raised" sentence: John seems to love coffee.)

### Extraposition[edit]

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Dummy it can also be found in extraposition constructions in English, such as the following:

It was known to all the class [that the boy failed his test].

## Dummy objects[edit]

In English, dummy object pronouns tend to serve an ad hoc function, applying with less regularity than dummy subjects. Dummy objects are sometimes used to transform transitive verbs to a transitive light verb form: e.g., do → do it, "to engage in sexual intercourse"; make → make it, "to achieve success"; get → get it, "to comprehend". Prepositional objects are similar: e.g., with it, "up to date"; out of it, "dazed" or "not thinking". All of these phrases, of course, can also be taken literally. For instance:

He ordered a cheeseburger, and even though it took them a while to make it, he did get some French fries with it.

## Dummy predicates[edit]

It has been proposed[by whom?] that elements like expletive there in existential sentences and pro-forms in inverse copular sentences play the role of dummy predicate rather than dummy subject, so that the postverbal noun phrase would rather be the embedded subject of the sentence.[citation needed]

## See also[edit]

* Impersonal verb
* Null-subject language

## References[edit]

1. ^ Matthews, Peter Hugo (2003). The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

* Everaert, M. - van Riemsdijk, H - Goedemans, R. (eds) 2006 The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Volumes I-V, Blackwell, London: see "existential sentences and expletive there" in Volume II.
* Chomsky, Noam (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris., cited in http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2004/Alba-Salas.pdf.
* Bolinger, D. L. (1977). Meaning and form. English Language Series, 11. London: Longman.
* Graffi, G. 2001 200 Years of Syntax. A critical survey, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
* Moro, A. 1997 The raising of predicates. Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

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* t
* e

Lexical categories and their features

Noun|

* Abstract / Concrete
* Adjectival
* Agent
* Animacy
* Bare
* Collective
* Countable
* Initial-stress-derived
* Mass
* Noun adjunct
* Proper
* Relational
* Strong / Weak
* Verbal

Verb|

| Forms|

* Attributive
* Converb
* Finite / Nonfinite
* Gerund
* Gerundive
* Infinitive
* Participle
* Supine
* Transgressive
* Verbal noun

|

Types|

* Ambitransitive
* Andative / Venitive
* Anticausative
* Autocausative
* Auxiliary
* Captative
* Catenative
* Compound
* Copular
* Defective
* Denominal
* Deponent
* Ditransitive
* Dynamic
* Exceptional case-marking
* Frequentative
* Germanic strong
* Germanic weak
* Impersonal
* Inchoative
* Intransitive
* Labile
* Lexical
* Light
* Modal
* Negative
* Performative
* Phrasal
* Predicative
* Preterite-present
* Pure
* Reflexive
* Regular / Irregular
* Separable
* Stative
* Stretched
* Transitive
* Unaccusative
* Unergative

Adjective|

* Anti-intersective
* Collateral
* Common
* Demonstrative
* Intersective
* Nominalized
* Non-intersective
* Possessive
* Postpositive
* Proper
* Pure intersective
* Relative subsective
* Subsective

Adverb|

* Conjunctive
* Flat
* Genitive
* Interrogative
* Locative
* Prepositional
* Pronominal
* Relative

Pronoun|

* Bound variable
* Demonstrative
* Disjunctive
* Distributive
* Donkey
* Dummy
* Formal / Informal
* Gender-neutral / Gender-specific
* Inclusive / Exclusive
* Indefinite
* Intensive
* Interrogative
* Personal
* Possessive
* Reciprocal
* Reflexive
* Relative
* Resumptive
* Strong / Weak
* Subject / Object / Prepositional

Adposition|

* Casally modulated
* Inflected
* Stranded

Determiner|

* Article
* Demonstrative
* Interrogative
* Possessive
* Quantifier

Particle|

* Discourse
* Interrogative
* Modal
* Noun
* Possessive

Other|

* Classifier
* Measure word
* Complementizer
* Conjunction
* Copula
* Coverb
* Interjection
* Ideophone
* Onomatopoeia
* Preverb
* Procedure word
* Pro-form
* Pro-verb / Pro-sentence
* Prop-word
* Syntax–semantics interface
* Yes and no

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