Anticipatory “it” with “that”

Question

In this sentence, why do we need to use the anticipatory “it”?The object of sentence comes immediately after the verb.“You should appreciate it that we’re all nice to you.”

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

piermoIn this sentence, why do we need to use the anticipatory “it”?

You don't. It's optional.

CJ

Piermo · Answer

The reason why I asked this question is because I found this example on a website, and I thought it was wrong, so I wanted to double-check with someone else’s opinion.

The reason why is wrong to use the anticipatory object “it” is because the sentence has already “that we are all nice to you” as the object of the verb “appreciate”.

For instance, in this example:

“He got it into his head that we were all against his proposal.”

Here we need to use “it” because the real object of the verb “that we were all against his proposal” comes at the end of the sentence.

Between the verb “got” and the direct object, there is the phrase “into his head”, so we need the anticipatory object “it” to make the sentence grammatical.

Anticipatory “it” with “that”

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