Sentence Types

Nonreferencial Sentences

The word nonreferential literally means “without a referent.”  Nonreferential sentences, then, are sentences whose subjects don’t really seem to refer to anything in the world very clearly. At the end of Chapter 2 we saw some examples of such sentences.  They include:

1. It’s raining.
2. It’s my birthday.
3. It is four hours to Minneapolis.

As you look at the three sentences presented above, try to give the exact thing that the word it refers to.  If a pronoun is referential, we are able to come up with a noun or noun phrase to stick in as a substitute for the pronoun—that is, we should be able to switch back and forth between noun phrase and pronoun at will.  We can see the referential use easily in the following: I broke my leg, and it hurts.  In this sentence, the word it is a clear substitute for the leg of the speaker, and we can switch back and forth between saying it and my leg at will.

In example sentences 1, 2, and 3, however, the referent is much less definite in nature.  If someone asks, What’s the weather like?  and we answer it’s raining, the meaning seems perfectly clear, but try saying the weather instead of it, and we end up with the awkward sounding sentence the weather is raining.  This awkwardness is caused by the fact that the subject it is a nonreferential subject rather than a referential subject.  A slightly less awkward sentence is formed when we try to locate a referent for sentence 2, and we can name any particular day as a referent here.  An even more awkward result occurs when we try to find a referent for the third sentence.  We can try to say the trip or the time as substitutes for it, but the time is four hours to Minneapolis just doesn’t sound grammatical, and neither does the trip is four hours to Minneapolis.  This is another clear case of a nonreferential subject.

When looking to identify the subject of each of these three sentences, we must, however, identify the word it as the subject.  The word it does fulfill the grammatical role of subject for the sentence.  What it lacks is a semantic role.  Still, when teaching ELLs, I find pretending that there is a clear referent is the easiest way to present the larger meaning of the whole sentence.  I show that the word it means either the weather, or the day or the time, but that we always like to just say it for these sentences because rain is always about the weather, and birthdays are always about days, and hours are always about time.  We don’t need to say the longer noun phrase, and we just always say it in these kinds of sentences.  This explanation is satisfactory for quite a long while for most learners.

Existential There Sentences

Another type of sentence with a nonreferential subject is a sentence using there in the subject position.

Activity 4:4 Real subjects

If we define the subject of the sentence as the topic of discussion, which words in the sentences below best fit that definition?

Click on the words to underline them.

You should have noticed that each pair of sentences in Activity 14 from the beginning to the end were related to each other, and that the second of each pair was the example of the nonreferential sentence.  To describe more closely what the differences in structure between the first and second sentence of each pair, we’d note two primary points.  First, the subject from the first sentence is no longer in the same position.  It has been postposed, or placed in a position located later in the sentence.  More specifically, it has been placed to the right of the BE verb.  Second, the subject position in the sentence has been filled with the word there.

This type of sentence is often called an existential there sentence because there is also a slight shift in meaning from the first of each pair to the second.  The second sentence simply seems to indicate what entities exist in a certain scene, situation, or location.  The first sentence gives the impression that the entities that are the topics are of importance and more will be said about them in later sentences.  The second sentence implies no such continued focus, although that may, in fact, result.

When teaching students just learning the language, trying to explain the abstract concept of existence is quite difficult, and the most expedient approach to explaining these sentences is to teach that these pairs of sentences have essentially the same meaning; a person can choose one or the other.  To describe the structure, I also avoid teaching the term “nonreferential subject,” since that is also difficult to explain.  Instead, I like to use the alternative term Dummy Subject.  It is easy to explain a dummy by referring to the movies.  I ask my students if a famous actor like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise is in a movie and falls off the roof of a tall building, if that really happens to Brad or Tom.  Then I ask them how it happens that it looks like that in the movie, and I can introduce the word dummy as a false actor.  Then I show them where the real subject is in these sentences and where the dummy subject is.  I make sure to tell them that to make sure they understand the meaning, they have to find the real subject.  With such a concrete explanation, students understand the structure quite well.  That is important because English uses dummy subjects in other complex sentences where identifying the real subject is much more difficult than in these sentences, and the foundation for understanding them is laid here at the simple sentence level by taking the time to explain dummy subjects.

Questions