Курсовая работа: Subject: ways of expressing the sentence

it doesn’t represent any person or thing. Here we must distinguish:

a) the impersonal it, which is used to denote:

* denotes natural phenomena (such as the state of the weather, etc.) or that which characterizes the environment. In such sentences the predicate is either a simple one, expressed by a verb denoting the state of the weather, or a compound nominal one, with an adjective as predicative.

* to denote time and distance

b) the introductory or anticipatory it introduces the real subject.

When the subject of a sentence is an infinitive, or a gerund or a whole clause, it is placed after the predicate and the sentence begins with the pronoun it which is called an anticipatory or introductory it.

c) the emphatic it is used for emphasis.

It is cold in winter.

It often rains in autumn.

It is stuffy in here.

It is delightfully quiet in the night.

It is five minutes past six.

How far is it from your office to the bank? (Galsworthy)

It is a long way to the station.

It is morning already.

It’s no use disguising facts .

It was curious to observe that child .

It was he who had brought back George to Amelia. (Thackeray)

It was Winifred who went up to him. (Galsworthy)

The construction there is

When the subject of the sentence is indefinite (a book, books, some books), it is often placed after the predicate verb and the sentence begins with the introductory particle there. The word there has no stress and is usually pronounced with the neutral vowel /ðƏ/ instead of /ðέƏ/. It has lost its local meaning, which is shown by the possibility of combining it in the sentence with the adverbs of place here and there:

there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow… (Bronte)

‘There’s a good spot over there.’ (Cusack) [11, 341]

Things are specifically different in cases when it and there are used in subject positions as representatives of words or longer units which embody the real content of the subject but are postponed.

It is most pleasant that she has already come.

It was easy to do so.

There are a few mistakes in your paper.

There were no seats at all.

It and there in such syntactic structures are generally called anticipatory or introductory subjects.