A Quebec listener asks: In the phrases it’s a girl, or it’s raining, what exactly is the it here? It’s called the weather it or the dummy it, and it serves a placeholder inserted to make the sentence function grammatically. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Placeholder “It””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Oh, yes. This is Martha?
Yes. Who’s this?
Hi, Martha. This is George.
George. Welcome to the show.
Hi, George. How are you doing?
Oh, good. Thank you very much.
How are you doing? Very well. Good.
It’s good to have you on here. Where are you calling from?
I’m calling from Kirkland, Quebec.
It’s a town close to Montreal.
Okay. Great.
How can we help you?
Yes, I have two questions.
It’s about it.
When you say, for example, it is a baby or it is a girl, why we use it?
Because it is for animals or things.
And we are using this with the baby or it’s a boy, it’s a girl.
Right, right.
And the other question is when you say it’s raining, why is it?
It means the cloud, the air, the weather.
So we’ve got a couple of interesting questions here, George.
The first one, the main reason that somebody would use it, it might be because they’re unclear about the gender of the thing that they’re talking about.
So if you say it’s a baby, maybe you don’t know that it’s a boy or a girl baby.
But the thing is…
But anyway, it’s a human being.
Right. So we don’t have a good pronoun to use if you don’t know the gender.
Most people will probably avoid saying he or she if they don’t know it.
But what about, you know, when a baby is born and you see all these cards and balloons and things and they all say, it’s a boy.
Right.
I think that’s your question, right?
Yeah, it’s a boy.
But yeah, that’s why.
Why do you use it?
We have this thing in English that’s not widely taught.
It’s called the dummy it, D-U-M-M-Y-I-T.
And the dummy it is kind of a placeholder.
In English, we require that a sentence have a subject.
But sometimes we have these circumstances where the subject is not clear or the subject is also the object or just we’re kind of making a general statement where the subject doesn’t matter.
So we say things like, it’s a boy, meaning the occasion tells me that it is a boy.
We use it just to respect the laws of grammar.
Yes, exactly.
It’s raining is another great example of that.
Or it’s a long way to Tipperary.
We don’t really have to have the it’s there.
It’s hot.
Except the grammar requires it.
The syntax of English requires it.
And so we drop it in there.
And there are thousands of ways to do this in English, to use it in this way where it’s not clear why it is in there, but we do it.
Most English speakers don’t study this in school, so it’s kind of a surprise to them to hear the term weather it or dummy it, which is kind of the colloquial linguistics way to refer to these.
Now it’s clear for me.
It’s mainly to respect the law of the construction of sentences.
There we go.
Exactly right.
Yep, you nailed it.
Okay, good.
Oh, thank you very much.
I really appreciate it.
You really clarified me the question.
George, thank you so much for your call.
We really appreciate you calling.
Have a good day.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
That’s great.
Fantastic question.
And he really got right to the heart of the answer, didn’t he?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And when you say weather it, you’re not spelling it W-H, right?
You’re talking about actually the weather.
Yeah, rain and smell.
Yeah, it’s fog, that sort of thing.
It’s foggy out.
Well, what is the it?
Well, it’s a placeholder subject that we need in order to make the sentence sound right to us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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