Peter,

That's what Jespersen and other grammarians have called an extraposed
noun clause.  Some speakers don't like

Molly hates that Fred isn't coming to the party.

They don't treat verbs like love and hate as taking clausal objects, and
so the clause has to be moved out of object position and the expletive
"it" put in where it was.  We do the same thing with subject noun
clauses, only there it's more common:

That the patient couldn't walk a hundred yards bothered the doctor.

Is more likely to come out as 

It bothered the doctor that the patient couldn't walk a hundred yards.

Another extraposed noun clause, but this time from subject position.

With some verbs like seem or appear, extraposition is obligatory.  We
can't say

That we made a miscalculation seems.

So we say

It seems that we made a miscalculation.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams
Sent: 2008-02-16 23:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The use of "that"

Meanwhile, back to Nancy's original sentence:

    Molly hates Fred isn't coming to the party.

Does anyone think this is an improvement:

    Molly hates it that Fred isn't coming to the party.

Peter Adams

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