When it comes to "It's raining," I prefer the "dummy subject" interpretation: "It" is all syntax and no reference. The verb carries all the referential meaning in the text. — Dawnstorm

:up:

Effective communication may be expressed grammatically or not. The advantage of grammatical utterances is that communication is more reliable expressed and received. However, animal communication (which we also use) employs facial expression, posture, gross physical movement, gestures (like hand waving), audible but not articulate utterances, and so on.

Simple but important expression and interpretation occurred long before humans developed language, grammar, and philosophy.

That's because it's wrong. @Terrapin Station seems to be confusing the main and auxiliary uses of the verb "to be". Aux use gives sub+aux verb+action verb (present continuous) as in "He is running". Main use can give attributive or identifying relations (with adjective or noun on right side respectively). Identifying relation illustrated by the sentence: "The meteorological condition is rain" is closest to the nonsense sentence he provided.

That's because it's wrong. Terrapin Station seems to be confusing the main and auxiliary uses of the verb "to be". Aux use gives sub+aux verb+action verb (present continuous) as in "He is running". Main use can give attributive or identifying relations (with adjective or noun on right side respectively). Identifying relation illustrated by the sentence: "The meteorological condition is rain" is closest to the nonsense sentence he provided. — Baden

I don't know where to start because every sentence in your comment has multiple problems and I don't want to write a thousand word reply.

Let's just start with this: what is the "nonsense sentence" I'm providing?

The meteorological conditions outside is raining.

That doesn't seem right. — Michael

Maybe that's what Baden was referring to. Why would you just be substituting the one phrase for the pronoun like that, like you're a robot?

It is obvious that you're wrong that the "it" in "It is raining" behaves like any other subject pronoun (or that all pronouns behave the same way). — Baden

First off, it behaves that way just in case someone thinks about it in that way, right?

Re "It" in your sentence, it can simply stand for "The conventions are such that," "The facts" (if you believe such things are facts), etc.--it just depends on how you think about it.

I don't know where to start because every sentence in your comment has multiple problems and I don't want to write a thousand word reply. — Terrapin Station

That bluff won't work because I know what I'm talking about.



Substitute the noun you think is appropriate for the pronoun in the sentence I provided and the original one. It should be easy under your analysis.

That bluff won't work because I know what I'm talking about. — Baden

I'll do thousands of words back and forth with you picking all of that apart, but one at a time. (The first part, in order, would be the thousands of words we'll get into re the idea that one can be wrong about this stuff.)

Substitute the noun you think is appropriate for the pronoun in the sentence I provided and the original one. It should be easy under your analysis. — Baden

As I asked Michael, why would you just be doing a simple substitution,as if that's what I was suggesting, as if you're a robot?

Are we asking for the answer for robots? (Maybe because the goal is AI programming or something?)

Yes, it's not simple. That's the point I was making.

See, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_pronoun

It's not a kindergartener issue. It's a serious linguistic issue.

See, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_pronoun — Baden

The first big problem in that description is that what it is for something to have meaning is for an individual to mentally assign a meaning to the item in question.

If you want a simple replacement for something like "It is obvious that the violence will continue," you can just say something like "The facts are obvious that the violence will continue."

You have to change "is" to "are," obviously, in order to follow grammatical conventions re singular/plural.

Likewise you could say something like "The meteorological condition outside is rain." We just need to modify the forms of words we're using a bit to match conventions, if you are concerned with actual substitution for some reason. (And non-robots should not need to have this explained to them.)

I wouldn't say something a la "Every word must have a meaning" or "Every occurrence of 'it' must have a meaning" or anything like that, by the way--obviously not if my view is that the meaning of any x is determined simply by an individual assigning whatever meaning they do (or do not). So also, any particular occurrence of 'it' doesn't necessarily have any particular meaning, either. As I said in my first post in this thread: "(Well, or i should clarify 'What I'd normally take the subject to be in lieu of other information' . . . I dont want to suggest objectivist semantics.) "

Likewise you could say something like "The meteorological condition outside is rain." — Terrapin Station

As I said, you are confusing the present continuous tense with the present tense and auxiliary and main forms of the verb 'is'. 'It is rain' is not the same kind of sentence as "It is raining". At all. That's basic grammar. And we are discussing the latter not the former. So, yes, you can make the issue disappear by changing words so we're no longer talking about what we were taking about. But so what?

It is NOT raining, so shut up about it already.

It's not a kindergartener issue. It's a serious linguistic issue. — Baden

It would strike me that the only serious linguistic issue would be one where a speaker could not convey his thoughts due to formal rules in place, yet that never seems to occur. In fact, I'd think that the speakers would just modify the rules so they could say what they wanted to.

The thought conveyed with "it is raining" is that rain is descending from the sky above There is likely some historical reason we use "it" to refer vaguely to the generalized state of being in the world around us, but why might this matter? When I take a shower in the morning, I don't wonder where I might take it. That's just how you say it. And if you tell someone that you are going to now engage in showering, you're communicating two things: you are going to take a shower and you're not a native English speaker.

I wouldn't say something a la "Every word must have a meaning" or "Every occurrence of 'it' must have a meaning" or anything like that, by the way--obviously not if my view is that the meaning of any x is determined simply by an individual assigning whatever meaning they do (or do not). So also, any particular occurrence of 'it' doesn't necessarily have any particular meaning, either. As I said in my first post in this thread: "(Well, or i should clarify 'What I'd normally take the subject to be in lieu of other information' . . . I dont want to suggest objectivist semantics.) " — Terrapin Station

This is irrelevant and in no way compensates for a basic lack of knowledge of grammar.

What I wanted to convey was that it's a matter of linguistic debate and analysis and there is a 'there' there in that context. There's no practical or philosophical 'there' there though that I see.

When I take a shower in the morning... — Hanover

But you don't.

'It is rain' — Baden

Is "It is rain" the same as "The meteorological condition outside is rain"?

What I wanted to convey was that it's a matter of linguistic debate and analysis and there is a 'there' there in that context. There's no practical or philosophical 'there' there though that I see. — Baden

What I feel you're doing is entering strained-puzzle-creation mode about mundane shit.

s "Is it rain" the same as "The meteorological condition outside is rain"? — Terrapin Station

I guess you mean "It is rain". In which case insofar as rain is a type of meteorological condition, you can do the substitution (minus the adverb).

It (pronoun substituting for noun phrase, "The meteorological condition")
is (main verb "to be" [relationship: identifying])
rain (noun phrase).

You could also use "This wet stuff" or whatever. An analogous sentence would be "It is a cat", "It" could be a substitution for "The animal" as in "The animal is a cat". No problem here.

But these are completely different sentences grammatically to the original, so I don't see the relevance.

What I feel... — Terrapin Station

If anyone cares what you feel maybe they can write me a PM explaining why because on that I'm stumped.

So, you'd say that "It is snow" is the same as "It is rain" because we could make a substitution in either case and you'd analyze it the same grammatically? That's what you took me to be asking you?

Sure, and if you don't care you can keep responding to me. That would be a good way to show that you don't care/you're not interested.

Sure, and if you don't care you can keep responding to me. That would be a good way to show that you don't care/you're not interested. — Terrapin Station

If I had a dollar for every time you said that to someone... Carry on then. I'll leave you to it.

Carry on then. I'll leave you to it. — Baden

That bluff won't work because I know what I'm talking about.

Maybe that's what Baden was referring to. Why would you just be substituting the one phrase for the pronoun like that, like you're a robot? — Terrapin Station

That’s what we usually do. “It is hot” becomes “the kettle is hot”. “He is running” becomes “John is running”.

What can we substitute in for “it” in “it is raining”? Apparently not “the meteorological conditions”.

As I explained above, "The meteorological condition outside is rain"--it doesn't have the same exact grammatical form as "It is raining," but that's simply because of linguistic conventions. Semantically, to many people, it's the same. If we're just talking about grammatical conventions qua grammatical conventions, for their own sake, and we're not at all talking about semantics, etc., why are we doing that? (Not to mention that we can't really talk about grammatical conventions for their own sake while avoiding semantics, anyway--we have to involve semantics to talk about anything really)

I could see focusing on grammar for its own sake in that way if we were trying to program some AI or something maybe--that might be useful in that context.

https://www.quotes.net/quote/17504

https://forum.oxforddictionaries.com/en/categories/grammar-punctuation-usage

Anyway, if we were avoiding semantics and ONLY talking about grammar per se, then obviously the subject of "It is raining" is "It."

As soon as you ask "What does 'it' refer to" you're doing semantics. Semantically, "It" is "the meteorological conditions outside." What does the sentence tell us about the meteorological conditions outside? That there's liquid precipitation at the moment, of course.

Semantically, most people would say that "It is raining" is the same as "Il pleut." "It is raining" is not grammatically the same as "Il pleut" however.

Syntactically, the subject is 'it.'

Semantically, there is no subject.

The subject is not the rain, because 'the rain is raining' makes no sense. Likewise for pretty much anything you put in place of 'it.'

Notice also that the question 'is it raining?' makes sense, but the question 'what is raining?' does not.

In languages, unlike English, where an overt syntactic subject is not obligatory, you often cannot put a subject before meteorological verbs like 'rain.'