dummy 'it'

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 15, 2005, at 5:53 PM, Matthew Gordon wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Subject:      dummy 'it'
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>
> Can someone give me the standard line and/or references on the
> analysis of
> "it" in sentences such as:
>
> "Who is it?" in response to a knock on the door
> "What is it?" with the meaning of "what's wrong?"
>
> Labov in his classic article on copula deletion and contraction refers
> to
> this as "dummy it" (and of course notes that contraction/deletion is
> not
> permitted in this context).

Back in the 'Forties, there was a comic-book character named "McSnurtle
the Turtle." When there was evil going on, McSnurtle doffed his shell
and became the superhero, Mr. Terrific What's It, a kind of parody of
The Flash. That there was something odd about "What's It" was clear to
me even then, though I was only a fourth-grader at a time when
"ungrammatical" referred to the use of "ain't" or the use of multiple
negatives.

-Wilson Gray

>  Is this "it" syntactically the same as the dummy
> subject in, e.g., "it's raining"? Obviously it's not the same in that
> contraction is permitted in the latter case, but I guess I'm asking if
> syntactians would label both of these as the same "dummy it". They
> don't
> feel the same to me, but then I'm not a syntactician so I don't put so
> much
> faith in my intuitions.
>
> -Matt Gordon
>