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Bookmark or Share- "There is some" or "There are some"- which is correct?By the time the real subject comes along, plural or not, the listener will've forgotten how the sentence started. Since it didn't start with anything meaningful except the dummy existential. Incidentally, there is always gets contracted to there's in speech. Not contracting is unusual and draws attention. –
- It is + adjective - English Language Learners Stack ExchangeThe it in your sentences is a dummy subject. In English, you can build sentences with dummy subjects such as "it" and "there" in place of an ordinary subject noun. And the real subject is usually somewhere else in the clause, in the form of the to-infinitive or gerund. So you can also say: It is no use to go over there. It is no use going over ...
- It - Preparatory subject - English Language Learners Stack ExchangeThe "it" does not represent a semantic argument and cannot be replaced by any other noun phrase. There is no question of dummy "it" being a preparatory element, since the elements that follow it do not give the meaning if "it". "It" is, then, just a dummy element serving the syntactic purpose of filling the obligatory subject position.
- what’s the difference between dumb and stupid?There isn't much difference between dumb and stupid when referring to intelligence.Dumb is probably more of an insult, while stupid can refer to a temporary state such as drunken insensibility, but English has a very large number of terms for a lack of intelligence, which typically differ less in meaning than offensiveness and appropriateness.
- Using "they" in tag questions with everybody/nobody etcIn English, existential clauses usually use the dummy subject construction (also known as expletive) with there, as in "There are boys in the yard"… In the OP's sentence, the subject is not "nobody" but there (is). Consequently, the rule dictates that you should repeat the same subject used in the clause to make a question tag.
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