A dummy subject

Question

It's good to sleep early.Why "It" is a dummy subject?There's a woman standing next to him.The same with this, why "there" is a dummy subject?

BillJ · Accepted Answer

Jadel It's good to sleep early. Why "It" is a dummy subject?

It’s called ‘dummy’ because people think of it as not being 'real'. Grammatically the term ‘dummy’ actually refers to the pronoun “it”, not 'subject'. The dummy pronoun “it” is semantically empty; it has no inherent meaning, but just fills the grammatical requirement in English that a sentence must have a subject. In examples like this one the dummy pronoun "it" is generally considered to be the grammatical subject.

Jadel There's a woman standing next to him. The same with this, why "there" is a dummy subject?

The same applies: the meaningless dummy pronoun “there” is filling the grammatical subject position. When used with the verb “be”, it is often called “existential there” because sometimes (but not always) it asserts the existence of someone or something, which it does in your example. You could rewrite your sentence as the non-existential “A woman is standing next to him”. Like dummy "it", the dummy pronoun "there" is generally considered to be the grammatical subject.

BillJ

Jadel · Answer

Thank you very much.

A dummy subject

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