Whose primary job it was...

Question

Hi everybody!I've just found a sentence in a text and I have a doubt about it. "Napoleon Bonaparte employed an assistant with the same size feet, whose primary job it was to break in the emperor's new shoes."Could anybody explain why "it" is there?Thanks!

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

tarirotariCould anybody explain why "it" is there?

It's a dummy "it" in the subordinate clause.

The subject is an infinitive clause:

To break in the emperor's new shoes | was | his job.

Dummy "it" substitutes as subject and the infinitive clause is moved to the end:

It | was | his job | to break in the emperor's new shoes.
_________

Compare: To be on time | is | important. > It | is | important | to be on time.
_________

Then the relative word whose replaces his and whose job is moved to the front of the relative clause:

it was | whose job | to break in the emperor's shoes
V

whose job | it was | to break in the emperor's shoes.

(The dummy "it" stays just where it was before the move.)

CJ

Tarirotari · Answer

Thanks, CalifJim, for your thorough answer

But then my doubt is: couldn't "whose job" (=his job) be considered the subject of the subordinate, and leave the sentence without the "it":

whose job was to break in the emperor's shoes
S V C

I understand the concept of the dummy "it" you explained, but in this particular sentence I find it very confusing.

Thanks again.

Khoff · Answer

I think you could say the original sentence either way.  It depends on whether you consider the underlying sentence to be "It was his job to break in the Emperor's shoes" or "His job was to break in the Emperor's shoes."

CalifJim · Answer

tarirotaricouldn't "whose job" (=his job) be considered the subject of the subordinate

Yes. That's an alternate way of looking at it. There are always two ways to phrase an equative sentence.

The president of the U.S. is Obama.
Obama is the president of the U.S.

To break in shoes was his job.
His job was to break in shoes.

But if you look at it that way, you can't explain the presence of "it", which was precisely what you wanted explained, because there would no longer be an "it" in the sentence.

You can leave out "it" and still have a grammatical structure, if that's what concerns you. It seems to me that any sentence of a similar form, i.e., with an equative structure in a subordinate clause, one side of which is an infinitive structure, has the potential for appearing in both ways -- with or without the "it".

In our last mathematics exam, the Pythagorean Theorem was the equation which/that (it) was important to know.

Underlying structure: This equation was important to know. (No it when this becomes subordinate.)
Underlying structure: It was important to know this equation. (it appears when this becomes subordinate.)

tarirotariin this particular sentence I find it very confusing.

Just a temporary state, I'm sure.

CJ

Tarirotari · Answer

I think I see light at the end of the tunnel!

Thanks for all your illustrative explanations. I would never have conceived that anyone could think of using an introductory "it" when you already have something that can be taken as subject (whose job) before the verb, its natural position. But now I see the logic:

The same way you would use this "it" in a sentence like "It was his job to break in the empreror's shoes", you can think of a subordinate sentence preserving the same structure: "whose job it was to...".

Thank you very much, you've been of much help.

CalifJim · Answer

tarirotariyou can think of a subordinate sentence preserving the same structure

Exactly!

CJ

BillJ · Answer

tarirotari"Napoleon Bonaparte employed an assistant with the same size feet, whose primary job it was to break in the emperor's new shoes."

Could anybody explain why "it" is there?

'It' is the subject of the relative clause 'whose primary job it was to break in the Emperor's new shoes'. If we insert "the assistant's (i.e. 'whose') primary job" in its logical position in the relative clause, it becomes clear: 'It was the assistant's primary job to break in the Emperor's shoes'.

'It', as used this way, is called the 'dummy it'. It's a meaningless pronoun that often appears as a subject in clauses like this as an alternative to a 'normal' subject:

The assistant's primary job was to break in the Emperor's new shoes.

It was the assistant's primary job to break in the Emperor's new shoes

BillJ

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