pleonastic "it"

[Mary Dalrymple]

For at least the reasons Dick points out, pleonastic arguments like
"it" do indeed appear in the f-structure.   There is some discussion
related to these issues in Halvorsen 1983:

Halvorsen, Per-Kristian.  1983.  Semantics for Lexical Functional
Grammar.  Linguistic Inquiry, 14(4):567--615.

Also see Bresnan 1982 for discussion of nonthematic arguments of
raising verbs:

Bresnan, Joan.  1982.  Control and complementation.  Linguistic
Inquiry, 13(3).  Also in Joan Bresnan, ed. 1982. The Mental
Representation of Grammatical Relations, Chapter 5,
pp. 282--390. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

I hope this is helpful.

 - Mary

>>>>> On Wed, 5 Jun 1996 13:51:10 PDT, Dick Hudson <dick at linguistics.ucl.ac.uk> said:

    > If pleonastic "it" is simply not shown at all at f-structure, as Steven
    > Shaufele suggests, how come it is involved in passivisation as in (2)?

    > (1) We expected it to rain.
    > (2) It was expected to rain.

    > And if all lexical requirements are imposed at f-structure, rather than at
    > c-structure, how come subject "it" is obligatory with some verbs (eg. RAIN)
    > even when they're not finite?

    > (3) *(It) raining during the picnic was a nuisance.
    > (4) *(For it) to rain in mid-summer is quite normal in London.

    > Richard Hudson
    > Department of Phonetics and Linguistics,
    > University College London,
    > Gower Street,
    > London WC1E 6BT
    > work phone +171 419 3152; work fax +171 383 4108
    > email dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk; web-site http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm