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172
The room was large. Somebody had already cleaned it.
We had no mutual understanding, and I wanted it badly.
The dog was sitting by him. Several times it had turned and looked up at the boy.
However when speaking of pet animals, especially cats and dogs, it is usual to refer to them as he or she
depending on whether they are male or female, as in:
He is a very nice dog. He is my friend. He knows how I feel.
It’s Pussy. She wants to go out.
The demonstrative pronoun it indicates non-persons or certain situations, mentioned in the previous
context:
Some were dancing, some tried to sing. A big man, bottle in hand, lay by the armchair. Clouds or smoke
hung under the ceiling. Suddenly I felt sick of it all.
Besides its anaphoric use, it is also used with demonstrative force when preceding the words it points to:
It’s my husband. It’s Mary. It was a red rose.
It may also have the force of a purely formal element of the sentence, as the formal subject or object devoid
of any lexical meaning. Its function is to point to the real subject or object which comes after the predicate and
is expressed either by an infinitive (an infinitive phrase) or by a gerund (a gerundial phrase), or else by a clause.
It was nice to stop here.
It was useless trying to see him.
It was clear to everybody that she was not well.
May I take it that you will keep your word?
When it refers to the predicative (or any part in this position) it selves as means of producing emphasis: the
word in the predicative position becomes prominent and therefore becomes the information focus of the
sentence:
It was he who did it.
Именно он это сделал. (Как раз он это сделал).
It was there that we met.
Именно там мы встретились. (Там-то мы и встретились).
It was to this room that Soames went.
Именно в эту комнату пошел Соме.*
* See Syntax, § 121.
The impersonal pronoun it functions as a purely structural element -the subject of impersonal sentences
describing various states of nature and environment, or things, time, measure, or distance, etc., as in:
It was
raining; It was cold that day; It’s spring already; It’s 10 o’clock; It’s still sixty miles to the river.
The pronoun they (them) is the plural form of the pronouns he, she and the personal it. Its syntactic functions
are similar to those of the forms in the singular. It may be used as subject (They had no time) and as predicative
(It's they who will answer first). The objective case form can also be used in these cases (That’s them). The
same form is to be found in comparative constructions, as objects and adverbial modifiers:
Do you know them, boy? (object)
Try to catch up with them. (prepositional object)
In front of them there were seven candles. (adverbial modifier)
In addition to their usual function when they have personal meaning the pronouns we, you, they may be used