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by Woodii on April 27th, 2006

Woodii

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When we say "it is raining," what is IT?

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  • by Anon on January 7th, 2007

    Anon

    It is called the "pleonastic it". In these sentences, there is no true subject, per se. However, in English all sentences must have an explicit subject. Therefore, in these examples "it" is a dummy pronoun serving as an explicit subject. In "pro-drop" languages like Spanish, sentences are not required to have an explicit subject and weather expressions like the ones above do not require a dummy pronoun ("Está lloviendo" = "It's raining").

    If you aren't convinced that "it" really isn't a real subject, consider the proposed answers such as that it represents the "sky" or "weather". Do native English speakers say "The sky is raining" or "The weather is raining"? Not really.

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