> Try this example instead: It is Thursday. As difficult as or no more difficult than It is raining. From a structual point of view it is S VP SC. From a communicative point of view: 'It' is relatively empty of meaning, so the topic it refers to is hazy as hazy can be, so what is left is the comment, which is the only bit of information we are interested in: the day of the week, or the state of the weather. While the topic often refers to information we already have ('old') and the comment to information we have not known before ('new'), in this case there is no old information, only new. This is also shown by the fact that these sentence are not normally uttered in isolation but are answers - and then the structure is different from the quoted one, only the relevant new information is actually referred to: Thursday. Raining. These are minor sentences. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany E-mail: [log in to unmask] [h] Fax: +49 7383 2212 HTTP://WWW.PH-GMUEND.DE/PHG/PHONLINE/Englisch/index.htm