Dummy pronoun

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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.

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A dummy pronoun is used when a particular verb argument (or preposition) is nonexistent, but when a reference to the argument (a pronoun) is nevertheless syntactically required. This is commonly the case if the verb is an impersonal verb, but it could also be that the argument is unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise taboo (as in naming taboo). For example, in the phrase "It is obvious that the violence will continue", the term 'it' is a dummy pronoun, not referring to any agent. Unlike a regular pronoun of English, it cannot be replaced by any noun phrase. [2]

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 pronouns are used in many languages across language families. Some of these families include Germanic languages, such as German and English, [3] Celtic languages, such as Welsh [4] and Irish, [5] and Volta-Niger languages, such as Ewe [6] and Esan. [7] Other common languages with dummy pronouns include French [8] and, colloquially, in Thai. [9] Pronoun-dropping languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Turkish do not require dummy pronouns. [10]

Dummy subjects

Weather it

One of the most common uses of dummy pronouns is with weather verbs, such as in the phrases "it is snowing" or "it is hot." [11]

In these sentences, 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 snowing" is to be considered a dummy word.

In spoken English, the feminine she is also often used, such as in the phrase "She's going to rain." [12]

Other views

Although the weather it is frequently considered a dummy pronoun, [13] 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. [14] 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. [15] 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".

Existential there

Another common use of dummy pronouns in English is the use of there in existential clauses, such as in the phrase "there are polar bears in Norway." [16] [17] This is also occasionally referred to as the anticipatory there. [18]

This should be distinguished from the locative there, as in "I saw a polar bear over there." This use of there acts as a locative adverb rather than a subject. [19]

While the existential use of there has generally been analyzed as a subject, [20] it has been proposed 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. [21]

Raising verbs

Other examples of semantically empty pronouns are found with raising verbs in "unraised" counterparts. [22] For example:

It seems that John loves coffee. (Corresponding "raised" sentence: John seems to love coffee.)
There is a bird flying outside. (Corresponding "raised" sentence: A bird is flying outside.)

Extraposition

Dummy it can also be found in extraposition constructions in English, a process known as it-extraposition. [23] For example:

It is fun living in Paris. (Corresponding non-extraposed sentence: Living in Paris is fun.)

At least in English, it-extraposition appears much more frequently than non-extraposition. [23]

Dummy objects

In English, dummy object pronouns tend to serve an ad hoc function, applying with less regularity than dummy subjects, though use of the dummy object can be traced at least as far back as the early sixteenth century. [24]

Dummy objects are sometimes used to transform transitive verbs to a transitive light verb form: [16] 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.

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ Matthews, Peter Hugo (2003). The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  2. ↑ Seppänen, Aimo (1 November 2002). "On Analysing the Pronoun IT". English Studies. 83 (5): 442–462. doi:10.1076/enst.83.5.442.8682.
  3. ↑ Bennis, Hans (2005). Gaps and Dummies. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: Amsterdam University Press. ISBN   9789053568590.
  4. ↑ King, Gareth (1993). Modern Welsh: a comprehensive grammar. London ; New York: Routledge. ISBN   0-415-09269-8.
  5. ↑ Legate, Julie Anne (1 January 1996). "Non-verbal predication in Irish: A reanalysis". Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics. 15. ISSN   1718-3510.
  6. ↑ Hyman, Larry M.; Comrie, Bernard (1981). "Logophoric Reference in Gokana". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 3 (1). doi:10.1515/jall.1981.3.1.19.
  7. ↑ Rolle, Nicholas (23 April 2023). "On the syntactic distribution and morphological form of resumptive pronouns in Esan". Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics. ISSN   1718-3510.
  8. ↑ Legendre, Géraldine (1990). "French Impersonal Constructions". Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. 8 (1): 81–128. ISSN   0167-806X.
  9. ↑ Indrambarya, Kitima (1996). On Impersonal Verbs in Thai. Fourth International Symposium on Language and Linguistics. Vol. 1. Department of Foreign Languages Kasetsart University. pp. 505–521.
  10. ↑ Pountain, Christopher (31 March 2020). "Copulas in the Romance Languages". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.641.
  11. ↑ Eriksen, Pål Kristian; Kittilä, Seppo; Kolehmainen, Leena (1 January 2010). "The linguistics of weather: Cross-linguistic patterns of meteorological expressions". Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”. 34 (3): 565–601. doi:10.1075/sl.34.3.03eri.
  12. ↑ Gardelle, Laure (1 January 2015). "Let her rain, she's snowing pretty good: The use of feminine pronouns with weather verbs in colloquial English". Folia Linguistica. 49 (2). doi:10.1515/flin-2015-0013.
  13. ↑ Krejci, Bonnie (16 October 2014). "What is Raining? English Weather "it" Revisited". LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts. doi:10.3765/exabs.v0i0.2405.
  14. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (14 December 2010). Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN   978-3-11-088416-6.
  15. ↑ Bolinger, Dwight (1983). Meaning and form (3. impr ed.). London: Longman. ISBN   9780582551039.
  16. 1 2 ""Dummy Pronouns" in English Grammar". Langeek.
  17. ↑ Breivik, Leiv Egil (March 1981). "On the Interpretation of Existential There". Language. 57 (1): 1. doi:10.2307/414284.
  18. ↑ ""There" as Subject: Existential There". The Editor’s Manual. 9 November 2020.
  19. ↑ "Definition of THERE". www.merriam-webster.com. 16 January 2025.
  20. ↑ Wang, Yong (2025). A typological study of the existential clause: a functional linguistics perspective. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN   9781032794730.
  21. ↑ Moro, Andrea (1997). The raising of predicates: predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780511519956.
  22. ↑ Radford, Andrew (1997). Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English (1st ed.). West Nyack: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781139166706.
  23. 1 2 Kaltenböck, Gunther (14 June 2005). "It-extraposition in English: A functional view". International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 10 (2): 119–159. doi:10.1075/ijcl.10.2.02kal.
  24. ↑ Mondorf, Britta (1 January 2016). ""Snake legs it to freedom": Dummy it as pseudo-object"". Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. 12 (1). doi:10.1515/cllt-2015-0071.
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