Factbites
 Where results make sense
About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   PR   |   Contact us  

Topic: Dummy pronouns


Related Topics

In the News (Thu 31 Dec 09)

  
  Dummy pronoun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A dummy pronoun (or, more formally, pleonastic pronoun) is a type of pronoun used in non- pro-drop languages, such as English, when a particular argument of a verb is nonexistent, unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise not to be spoken of directly, but a reference to the argument (a pronoun) is nevertheless syntactically required.
As objects, dummy pronouns tend to serve an ad hoc function, applying with less regularity than they do as subjects.
Dummy objects are sometimes used to transform transitive into intransitive verbs, e.g.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Dummy_pronoun   (220 words)

  
 Pronoun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English.
Reflexive pronouns are used as the object of a sentence when the subject and object match.
In some languages, a personal pronoun has a form called a disjunctive pronoun, which is used when it stands on its own, or with only a copula, such as in answering to the question "Who wrote this page?" English pronouns used in this way have caused some dispute.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Pronoun   (952 words)

  
 Talk:Pro-drop language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The dummy pronoun thing is an addendum: if a language is pro-drop, then it doesn't use dummy pronouns (since those are always redundant, or nonsensical, by definition).
A dummy pronoun is not a "real" pronoun in that it doesn't really refer to anything.
It's not the same to drop a "he" as in "he made the cake" and to drop an "it" as in "it rained yesterday" ("it" doesn't mean anything at all, it's just a syntactic requirement of English).
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Talk:Pro-drop_language   (469 words)

  
 The Acquisition of English Personal and Possessive Pronouns in Two Classroom Learning Environments
Although this pronoun study also examined both formal and informal learning, it was different from most other research studies in that the two types of learning in the pronoun study were observed entirely within the confines of the classroom [ 2 ].
In contrast, possessive pronouns in their two functions are likely to be more confusing to the learners especially in terms of their closeness of surface form and/or pronunciation in the my-mine, your-yours and our-ours contrasts.
This pronoun study suggests that, for very young learners, while personal pronouns and possessive pronouns with the determiner function may be taught early in the course, it might be best to defer the teaching of possessive pronouns with the nominal function until a later stage.
www-writing.berkeley.edu /tesl-ej/ej31/a1.html   (4424 words)

  
 Language School Explorer - Information about Pro-drop_language
Among major languages, a clearcut case of a pro-drop language is Japanese (featuring pronoun deletion not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts).
The pronouns in bold in the English translations ("it" in the first line, "I", "you", and "it" in the second) appear nowhere in the Japanese sentences, but are understood from context.
Pronouns are typically left in place only when they need to be inflected, e.g.
www.school-explorer.com /info/Pro-drop_language   (513 words)

  
 Ling 10
The use of they and their as plural pronouns only was first called 'standard' in the 18th century.
The most reasonable course of action for language users these days is to use 'his or her'-type constructions, or to recast the sentence so that you can use 'their' or a genderless determiner, or to alternate between masculine and feminine pronoun usage when a singular pronoun is required.
Collective nouns may take a singular or plural pronoun depending on if the noun acts as a group or as individual members of a group.
www.ling.upenn.edu /~tsanchez/Ling10PronounsChanges.htm   (1053 words)

  
 Pro-drop language - Art History Online Reference and Guide
In a pro-drop language, the pronouns that would normally take the place of those referents can be elided once the context has been established.
Among major languages, the prototype of pro-drop languages is probably Japanese (featuring pronoun elision not only for subjects, as is often implied, but for practically all grammatical contexts), but Romance languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Romanian are also pro-drop.
Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Romanian can elide subject pronouns only, and they often do even when the referent has not been mentioned, but this is helped by the fact that verbs in these three languages have a person/number inflection.
www.arthistoryclub.com /art_history/Pro-drop_language   (388 words)

  
 Academic Center: Grammar and Punctuation Handouts   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
Pronouns like each, everyone, everybody, anyone mean every single one and take singular verbs.
Pronouns like none, enough, more, most, some, all, or half can make agreement with either singular verbs or plural verbs, depending on the overall meaning of the sentence.
The relative pronouns who, which, and that refer to another noun or pronoun in the sentence.
www.vic.uh.edu /ac/grammar/subject2.html   (605 words)

  
 "It" in "It's raining"   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
Pronouns are not always atomic, meaningful words like book and keep ; quite often they're ionized for use as pieces of grammar, like the -er or the -s in bookkeepers.
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.
Dummy words, placeholders, are fairly common in analytical languages.
www-personal.umich.edu /~jlawler/aue/itsraining.html   (4194 words)

  
 Style sheet
Be careful about overusing dummy subjects--beginning sentences with "It is" or "There is/There are"; these are "dummy" subjects because they stand in for real subjects.
Sometimes it is not easy to avoid the dummy subject--perhaps this sentence is a case in point, but I could have written, "Sometimes the dummy subject is not easily avoided"--a bit shorter and more compact.
Make sure that a pronoun refers back to the correct noun and that the pronoun is not ambiguous (if two men have just been named, "he" could refer to either one of them.
www.luc.edu /literacy/style.html   (4525 words)

  
 Brainburst.com - the #1 Magic the Gathering (mtg) Strategy Article Resource   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
It appears I was mistaken in my belief that the "dummy counter" idea was a George Baxter-ism, as a couple of readers sent me email saying that, in fact, this was a Jamie Wakefield creation.
Both those dummy counters were earned roughly in the same way, and they illustrate an oversight on my part.
It was such a colossal whopper that Peter willingly used an empty Double Gulp as the dummy counter.
magic.tcgplayer.com /strategy/type2/torment/020311.asp   (2374 words)

  
 The Russian Prepositions: Introduction   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
Notice in the Russian table that the preposition ÄÏ + Gen cannot serve as an adverb at all and when it serves as a conjunction, it must have a dummy pronoun, ÔÏ bearing the genitive case marker, -ÏÇÏ.
Russian is forced to use dummy pronouns to reflect the case required by any preposition which is used as a conjunction.
Prepositions must always have an object noun or pronoun which bears the case governed by the preposition.
www.sat2k.com /ru/preposit.htm   (235 words)

  
 glossay
A dummy subject it is put in the original position.
In English, case is only visible on pronouns, e.g him, in Hermione saw him.
Words such as he, she, it, me that refer to an NP; pronouns replacing PPs ( there), AdjPs ( so), AdvPs ( thus), or VPs ( do so) are called either pronoun or pro-form.
www.public.asu.edu /~gelderen/314text/gloss.htm   (2745 words)

  
 Spanish grammar - Enpsychlopedia   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
A cleft sentence is one formed with the copular verb (generally with a dummy pronoun like "it" as its subject), plus a word that "cleaves" the sentence, plus a subordinate clause.
The verb fue has no dummy subject, and the pronoun el que is not a cleaver but a nominalising relative pronoun meaning "the [male] one that".
In uneducated speech in Spain, or casual speech in Latin America, the complex cleaving pronoun is often reduced to que, just as it is reduced to "that" in English.
www.grohol.com /psypsych/Spanish_grammar   (1253 words)

  
 Minor Word Classes Page 3
In the section on pronouns, we saw that the word it is a third person singular pronoun.
Dummy it is also used, equally vaguely, in other expressions:
In each of the following sentences, indicate whether the highlighted word is pronoun it, dummy it, or anticipatory it.
www.ucl.ac.uk /internet-grammar/minor/xmin3.htm   (196 words)

  
 [No title]
Avoid Dummy Constructions Except rarely, avoid dummy constructions.
Dummy: There are two processors in this server.
Dummy constructions occur in sentences beginning with: It is It was There are There were Other it and there phrases coupled with a verb form of the infinitive, to be Use Present Tense For actions which always occur or which habitually occur in the same fashion, use simple present tense verbs.
mywebpages.comcast.net /steven.gowin/uc_tech_com/style_dos_donts.doc   (264 words)

  
 Natural language with sentential pronouns | Ask MetaFilter
Specifically, I'm looking for a language that could say something to the effect of: "If John said something, then it," where "it" refers to the proposition that John said.
The latter half of the biconditional can't name the sentence, so it would have to anaphorically refer to the sentence by means of a pronoun.
What you've given me isn't exactly what I want -- for one, "so" is in nominal position, so it's standing in for the name of a sentence, not a sentence.
ask.metafilter.com /mefi/15738   (999 words)

  
 [blml] Perfect pronouns (was Dummy play)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
Previous message: [blml] Perfect pronouns (was Dummy play)
Next message: [blml] Perfect pronouns (was Dummy play)
Better to put a little effort in than to accept "they" as being singular.
www.amsterdamned.org /pipermail/blml/2003-December/011660.html   (146 words)

  
 [blml] Perfect pronouns (was Dummy play)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
When referring to a generic > or unknown individual, the pronoun "they" > is less offensive to 50% of homo sapiens > than the pronoun "he".
The question is not one of "offense", whether real or imagined, but of the rules of English grammar.
Those rules do change with time, but as far as I know, currently they are as Herman described, however loudly some may rail against them.
www.amsterdamned.org /pipermail/blml/2003-December/011599.html   (144 words)

  
 [No title]
ÐÏࡱá>þÿ ,.þÿÿÿ+ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿì¥Á[ ð¿õ bjbjââ "€j€jUŸÿÿÿÿÿÿlÐÐÐ丸¸¸ÌäK2ôôôôô{ { { ÊÌÌÌÌÌÌ$} ðÐ{ i { { { ð1 ôôu1 1 1 { X†ôÐôÊ1 { Ê1 À1 ñ:B,š6ÐÊôè $ Ë¼ÅÄäÔ¸Ó n Ê0KxRÓ ^Ê1 ääÙPRONOUNS (TESOL 1 Nov 12th)_..function as HEADS of NPs (she is…) …replace FULL nouns (Marie….)..are of various types personal (she, they, etc.) including possessive personal pronouns (his, their, etc.).
demonstrative (this, that, etc.) reflexive (herself, themselves, etc.) reciprocal (each other, one another) interrogative* (who, what, where, why,when[ever]?) relative* (that, who, whom, which, whose indefinite (each, some(one/thing/body), any(ditto),nothing,none, no one, both, one) existential/dummy (there, it) EXERCISE: Analyse (identify, explain, comment on) the following uses of the English pronoun: She is my sister.
 ( Bare NPs consisting of single pronouns  ( Not a bare NP but an N specified by a determiner.
www.hw.ac.uk /langWWW/PRONOUNS2.doc   (206 words)

  
 <HTML>
Note: If you'd like to read ahead, review the entire chapter.
3 pages 57-73 (pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and punctuation).
Pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and punctuation; AP style.
www.colorado.edu /Journalism/courses/3552/3552.html   (258 words)

  
 »»Reviews for Reference««   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
This book stimulated me to further study because it made me conversational much more quickly than the more conservative, "let's master the present tense first approach" of other academic text books.
It's nearest competitors in value per dollar would be books for a more advanced level of study, "Practice Make Perfect - Spanish Verb Tenses" and "Practice Makes Perfect - Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions," they are great supplements to any text.
I've taken all kinds of foreign language classes to no avail.
www.booksunderreview.com /Reference/Reference_6.html   (7351 words)

  
 Lanaki Lesson 5
For example, the third person singular pronouns of English (he, she, him, her, his, hers) distinguish gender, whereas those of the Palaung of Burma do not.
Gender exists in English, although a fully developed noun- gender and adjative-agreement system as in French and other Romance Languages (la belle fille, la beau fils), does not.
Tabulations of messages, text type, and volumes helped discriminate the practice and dummy traffic.
www.fortunecity.com /skyscraper/coding/379/lesson5.htm   (8801 words)

  
 Articles - Weather verb   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
Skiing - Ski Equipment : Skis, Ski Clothing, Ski Googles and More!
A weather verb is a special verb form found in English and certain other languages which, in its basic sense, is capable of taking only a dummy pronoun as its subject.
The situation is different in pro-drop languages, such as Italian, which do not require dummy pronouns: the Italian Piove ("rains"), which has no overt subject, is semantically identical to the English It's raining.
www.greensky.biz /articles/Weather_verb   (151 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)

Factbites
  About us   |   Why use us?   |   Reviews   |   Press   |   Contact us  
Copyright © 2005-2007 www.factbites.com Usage implies agreement with terms.