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How to avoid those unnecessary pronouns (i.e. “it”)

Home » English Grammar & Linguistics » How to avoid those unnecessary pronouns (i.e. “it”)

Relativization is a process whereby a noun or noun phrase in an embedded sentence is deleted.

A relativizer is the relative pronoun that, who/whom or which, and each is used to form a subject or object relative clause.

In the following examples, the rule of ordinary relative clause formation is such that the relativizer (bolded) is identical to the noun in the matrix noun phrase (italicized). Also the head-initialized antecedent (bolded) is marked by that, which is the relativizer and the syntactic head of a full clause:

  • “It’s really an important public health strategy that we have people thinking about it.” (an appositive clause)
  • “Yes, and I think that it’s something that—I had to find a way to understand it as an adult.” (an appositive clause)

SUMMARY/OBSERVATIONS: As a result of this above-mentioned rule acting upon the relative clause, it, which has been pronominalized (using a pronoun instead of a noun), is to be deleted because it is unnecessary. This is a standard approach to relativization, whereby a noun or noun phrase in an embedded sentence is deleted or pronominalized.

Garie McIntosh
Garie McIntosh
Hi, I’m Garie. Since 2016, I’ve been engaged in intense academic studies and research through problem-based learning. This has been a time during which I discovered the learning theories that work for me, and applied them so that I could teach myself not only English grammar but also the linguistic aspect of the language. My objective is to engender understanding through the Socratic and the life-affirming and build new knowledge through making innovative connections. I have formally translated my learning education into McIntoshLinguistics, an organization that I developed on the Microsoft platform. The organization enables me to use my educational and grammatical editing model to support educational processes and meet traditional publishing standards. Through a Microsoft Qualified Educational User designation, the objective is to utilize Microsoft Teams Education to build a professional learning community and create unique processes and methods through grammatical and linguistic studies. As a literary fiction writer, I have published my first novel, “What’s in a Name.” By utilizing Microsoft applications to help me develop and formalize pedagogical processes and methods, I am able to produce manuscripts that are highly readable and semantically sound.

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