Concept of pronoun 'It'

Question

Hi All,

Just wanted to clear my head of the Pronoun 'It'. Keeps popping up in different ways.

Is it necessary that for the pronoun 'It', the noun must always precede 'it' ?? Isnt it possible the noun comes in the same sentence but after the pronoun.. ?

For e.g. 'It will lead to economic disaster for the small farmer to plant the same crops as on the large farms'.

Is there a pronoun reference error here ?

Just wanted to clear my head on this

bmwhype2 · Answer

noun precedes pronoun. pronoun precedes noun. order does not matter. It is an syntactic expletive in your sentence. https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... =syntactic

dwivedys · Answer

Doesn't the IT refer to the infintive "To plant" ?

qtheboss · Answer

More exactly, it refers to the event "the small farmer to plant the same crops as on the large farms".

vineetgupta · Answer

You are right...this is not the case of the expletive 'it'...'it' is used in this case to delay the subject...lets flip the sentence:
 To plant the same crops as on the large farms  will lead to economic disaster for the small farmer.

msrinath · Answer

"It" can be used in two ways - as a referential "it"
eg - 1) -- fairly common-----

or Expletive "it"
eg - 1) It is dangerous to skate on thin ice.
 2) It seems that the manuscript has been found.
 3) Whenever it rains hard, the roof leaks.
expletive is the term used to describe syllables, words, or phrases that "fill a vacancy" without adding meaning to a text. 

Formal definition: An expletive pronoun is a pronoun (a word used to replace a noun or noun phrase) that provides a subject for a sentence or clause that otherwise lacks one.

Concept of pronoun 'It'

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