On the So-called Anticipatory It

On Analysing the Pronoun IT

“…The discussion of the anticipatory it presented in Seppänen et al (1990) contained a critical survey of the old traditional accounts and presented a description of it as a grammatical dummy devoid of both reference and meaning. Writing ten years later, Kaltenböck attacks this view of it, preferring to call it 'Seppänen's view' throughout the discussion, although it is clear from some of his sources (Huddleston 1984, Wekker & Haegeman 1985) that he must have been aware that the view was by no means limited to me and my co-workers.…”

“…However, as it is now vigorously defended by Kaltenböck, it is an analysis which must still be considered a living alternative view. Approaching this treatment, let us start with the following examples quoted from the early work of Quirk et al (1972: 632-3 In this analysis extraposition is regarded as parallel to right dislocation in that both are represented as consisting of a postponement of a clausal element and a substitution of a pro-form for it in its original position, though distinguished from each other by the phonological form (the break in dislocated structures) 454 AIMO SEPPÄNEN 5 In addition to the two descriptions generally presented, a third alternative is actually also possible, briefly considered in Seppänen et al (1990) and rejected for reasons specified in the paper. In the light of some new material, mainly historical, which I have more recently seen, it seems to me now that this rejection must be somewhat modified, but that lies outside the scope of the present discussion.…”

“…Oddly, Kaltenböck (1990: 55) brings this construction into the discussion as if it was a counter-argument to our analysis which had been overlooked by us. 7 Pointing out the lack of the number contrast it vs. they in extraposition, Seppänen et al (1990: 753) added in a footnote, following Channon (1980), that there are some restrictions on the use of they as a pro-form for clausal antecedents (cp. his example Don likes to ski and to skate.…”

“…To be sure, there has recently been a tendency among modern grammarians towards greater agreement on the nature of the special it, but differences of opinion are certainly still there even on fundamental questions of analysis. A telling example of this is a recent controversy: the analysis of the so-called anticipatory it proposed in Seppänen, Engström and Seppänen (1990), and the treatment of the same data by Kaltenböck (1998Kaltenböck ( , 1999 which sees the Seppänen et al view as fundamentally misguided and rejects it on all essential points of the analysis. As regards the raw data examined, there is no disagreement here, but the two descriptions offered of those data come to conclusions which are diametrically opposed.…”

Adjectives in extraposed constructions with that-clauses: a quantitative corpus-driven analysis

“…The past thirty years have witnessed a striking proliferation of publications devoted to different aspects of extraposition in English (Huddleston 1984;Quirk et al 1985;Seppänen, Engström and Seppänen 1990;Seppänen 1999;Biber et al 1999;Kaltenböck 2000Kaltenböck , 2003Kaltenböck , 2004Van Linden 2012). Some researchers have focused on the comparison of extraposition and right dislocation (McCawley 1988;Collins 1994) as well as extraposed constructions and clefts (Pérez-Guerra 1998;Calude 2008), while others have explored the discourse function of extraposition (Gómez-González 1997;Herriman 2000a,b;Hoey 2000;Miller 2001;Hewings and Hewings 2002;Rowley-Jolivet and Carter-Thomas 2005;Kaltenböck 2005).…”