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Subject:
Re: It should or There should be
From:
Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:48:01 -0600
Content-Type:
text/plain
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What hasn't been mentioned, that I think is important in explaining constructions to the ESL student, is that this particular construction is purely syntactic and there is nothing in the semantic structure of the sentence to correspond with the "dummy" expressions "there" and "it."  In these cases the words are there to fill out the required elements of a sentence, not to express some real entity in the world.  We can characterize the sentence as a whole, where such expressions may be appropriate, but there is simply no element out there that these words refer to.  Any reference is internal to the sentence.  

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 4:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: It should or There should be

After I posted earlier, I thought of "It's a beautiful day", clearly an
existential clause. And, of course, "It's a long way to Tipperary. Are
those exceptions to a general rule? I'm still scratching my head.

Craig>

My understanding is that in the South, "it" often replaces "there" in
> these existential expressions.  I remember an occasion several years back
> when a former president of my college, a product of an upper-middle-class
> background in South Carolina, returned from a fund-raising trip to San
> Diego and exclaimed, "Man, it's a lot of rich people in San Diego!"
>
> Dwayne Strasheim
> Hastings College
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Kehe
> Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:57 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: It should or There should be
>
> An ESL student wrote, "It should be no corporal punishment in schools."
> Would any of you have a simple way of explaining to her why "It" should be
> "There"?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Kehe
> Bellingham, WA
>
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