I wasn't making a sound...why waste your thoughts on commands that neither apply nor that you can enforce ?
You Should Be Forced to Resign
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netzach wrote:
'Raining outside?'
'Yeah!'...
Scotland 10- USA 0- Iceland 0
You shouldn't play this game with Icelanders...
nameno1had wrote:
TheMasterBuilder wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
Ubik42 wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
"This" is clearly ambiguous. I think the grammarians call it an "unclear antecedent".
Also, when someone says "It is raining", to what does the "it" refer to?
Beats me.
Apparently it's called a syntactic expletive. Basically it's there because English requires there to always be a subject in every sentence. "Rains" is not a complete sentence and is very confusing, so "it" is essentially an artificial subject, so it is "it" that rains instead of nothing.
An artificial subject ? It is called a pronoun. It is a very real subject. It is a substitute word for the proper name of the subject of the sentence.
You are not incorrect - it is a pronoun. But since it serves a purely syntactic role ("It" does not refer to a person or idea) it is referred to as a syntactic expletive, or "dummy" pronoun. I'll let Wikipedia explain:
Syntactic expletives are words that perform a syntactic role but contribute nothing to meaning.[1] Expletive subjects in the form of dummy pronouns are part of the grammar of many non-pro-drop languages such as English, whose clauses normally require overt provision of subject even when the subject can be pragmatically inferred (for an alternative theory considering expletives like there as a dummy predicate rather than a dummy subject based on the analysis of the copula see Moro 1997 in the list of references cited here).
The article does raise some concerns about the use of "it" in "it is raining" because "it" can be referring to the weather, but that clearly does not make sense. So I would not say it is a real subject at all.
May 15, 2013
0
#945
TheMasterBuilder wrote:
nameno1had wrote:
TheMasterBuilder wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
Ubik42 wrote:
Ziryab wrote:
"This" is clearly ambiguous. I think the grammarians call it an "unclear antecedent".
Also, when someone says "It is raining", to what does the "it" refer to?
Beats me.
Apparently it's called a syntactic expletive. Basically it's there because English requires there to always be a subject in every sentence. "Rains" is not a complete sentence and is very confusing, so "it" is essentially an artificial subject, so it is "it" that rains instead of nothing.
An artificial subject ? It is called a pronoun. It is a very real subject. It is a substitute word for the proper name of the subject of the sentence.
You are not incorrect - it is a pronoun. But since it serves a purely syntactic role ("It" does not refer to a person or idea) it is referred to as a syntactic expletive, or "dummy" pronoun. I'll let Wikipedia explain:
Syntactic expletives are words that perform a syntactic role but contribute nothing to meaning.[1] Expletive subjects in the form of dummy pronouns are part of the grammar of many non-pro-drop languages such as English, whose clauses normally require overt provision of subject even when the subject can be pragmatically inferred (for an alternative theory considering expletives like there as a dummy predicate rather than a dummy subject based on the analysis of the copula see Moro 1997 in the list of references cited here).
The article does raise some concerns about the use of "it" in "it is raining" because "it" can be referring to the weather, but that clearly does not make sense. So I would not say it is a real subject at all.
Holy Cow! It's getting deep.
This thread is the epitome of stupid.
Ubik42 wrote:
theMagicRabbit wrote:
Ubik42 wrote:
It doesnt need a top engine, you are checking pure material, not positional evaluations. I suspect a poorly trained second assisstant bookeeper armed with an abacus could do it.
I too, thought it was stupid, but over time the OP and his allies have come up with irrefutable and unaswerable mathematical proofs of their theses.
The only mathematical proofs I recall seeing came from a guy named "Ubik42", meaning you were convinced by yourself....
He is quite convincing. On the plus side, at least you can't claim he was a sockpuppet.
Wanna bet on that???
Ubik42 is a sockpu.... a sockp.... is a sock.... a soc...
Arrgggg, I can't say it!!!!
Here's to the power of "IT"!!
actually the wiki article is either a fraud or this only serves to show how ignorant some book smart people are, who have no common sense....
in the context of the sentence, it is raining.....it refers to the thing, otherwise known as the present time and place, instead of saying, here and now , precipitation is occuring....
it makes me wonder if those people even know what the word is means.....
May 15, 2013
0
#952
In Kasparov's Immortal, Kaspy is down more than 5 points for 3 moves.
nameno1had wrote:
actually the wiki article is either a fraud or this only serves to show how ignorant some book smart people are, who have no common sense....
in the context of the sentence, it is raining.....it refers to the thing, otherwise known as the present time and place, instead of saying, here and now , precipitation is occuring....
it makes me wonder if those people even know what the word is means.....
What makes you wonder?
May 15, 2013
0
#954
jargonaught wrote:
In Kasparov's Immortal, Kaspy is down more than 5 points for 3 moves.
Kasparov is a known cheater. Don't you remember when he cheated against Judit Polgar by not moving a piece he touched? Of course he would cheat here by not resigning when he was too much material down to have any chance to save the game. Thank you for further proving the thread originator's point.
Also, if you're going to lecture on grammar, you'd have far more credibility if you at least used punctuation appropriately.
TheGrobe wrote:
Also, if you're going to lecture on grammar, you'd have far more credibility if you at least used punctuation appropriately.
I, do not see what all this stuff ; is about do. You mean punctuation - has influence on the - readibility ?
nameno1had wrote:
actually the wiki article is either a fraud or this only serves to show how ignorant some book smart people are, who have no common sense....
in the context of the sentence, it is raining.....it refers to the thing, otherwise known as the present time and place, instead of saying, here and now , precipitation is occuring....
it makes me wonder if those people even know what the word is means.....
Can you prove it? If you can, I would be happy to admit defeat and walk away from this pointless argument with some newfound knowledge. But your words mean nothing. Here's a perhaps more credible source:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/itsraining.html
"OK, so what about It's raining? It's a kind of construction called a Dummy it. That is, the it has no meaning whatsoever (you're far from the first to be puzzled by it) and is used strictly as a placeholder, like the dummy hand in bridge, or the zero on 101. Why do anything that bizarre? Well, see, English Syntax has this Rule that says -- in ponderous and self-enforcing tones -- Thou Shalt Have A Subject In Every Finite Sentence. And thou must, indeed."
Your move.
What if you have an infinite sentence, as many people here seem to have?
"But it's already its own subject, self-activating."
Aha! So it's the rain that's raining.
Fictional characters are meaningless in this debate...
Well, then.....Silence, Nemo!