goelmohit2002 wrote:Hi All,

In the pronoun chapter of Manhattan it gives the following example:

"Friendship was something James truly valued so he disliked it when THEY talked about him behind his back"

Here THEY is wrong as is mentioned in the Manhattan too. Can somebody please tell to what "it" refers here ? Does this sentence has "it" reference issue too ? If no then why ?

Thanks
Mohit

Stacey Koprince wrote:
one of the things that we have to know is that "it" sometimes doesn't have any referents - and that's okay. Think about "it is raining outside." What does "it" refer to? Obviously nothing in that sentence - but, in the real world, what would if refer to? Mother nature? The sky? None of those make sense. "It" isn't really referring to anything real. What about: It is worthwhile to study. What could "it" refer to there?

So there are actually cases in which "it" is used as a subject but doesn't refer to anything real - it's just a placeholder because there's no real "actor" in the sentece (the "actor" is the noun performing the verb). So if you see "it" used as a subject in a sentence, consider that it might be a "dummy subject" - and check to see. Is anyone or anything actually performing this verb? (In which case "it" should refer properly to that thing) Or is there no real "actor" who would perform this verb? (In which case "it" is a dummy placeholder and has no referent)

In this case, we've got "it will be difficult to" do something. Is there someone or something that you could actually insert into that subject? The city will be difficult to absorb them? The district will be difficult to absorb them? No - we're not talking about a real noun here. "It" is just a dummy placeholder for the idea that "it will be difficult" to do something.