Timeline for Usage of the word "it" in the sentence "it wasn't me"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 1, 2021 at 19:03 | comment | added | Grand Torini | @ShayBoual I agree, I was thinking in general terms. I believe that "it" is a just a neutral placeholder that can be anything, he/ she/ it. That can also apply to your example, e.g. "Who stole the cookies?" "It wasn't me, it was the cat!" ... | |
| Jan 1, 2021 at 14:58 | comment | added | Shay Boual | @GrandTorini I think it refers to any entity or possible cause of the action. So in your example the "it" refers to whatever the cause of the noise is. And in my example, "it" is an unknown person as it is in response to the question "who xxx?" which means the answer is expected to be a person | |
| Jan 1, 2021 at 14:55 | vote | accept | Shay Boual | ||
| Dec 31, 2020 at 4:50 | comment | added | Jay | @GrandTorini BTW your answer reminds me ... In the past year I've gone from having 4 people living in my house to just me. A few days ago I was downstairs and I heard some floorboards creaking upstairs, and I said to myself, "My daughter must be walking around up there." Then I realized she no longer lived here. So, I concluded, it must be either a burglar or a ghost. That is, "it" in this case could be a person, a ghost, or something truly boring like changing temperatures. | |
| Dec 31, 2020 at 4:47 | comment | added | Jay | @GrandTorini Plausible. Maybe my "unknown person" and "some event" are really the same case. I didn't base my answer on anything I read in a grammar book but rather on my interpretation with experience speaking the language for 60 years. Grammar experts may well have "cleaner" definitions. | |
| Dec 31, 2020 at 0:11 | comment | added | Grand Torini | "Bobby is it you?, asked Julie after hearing a loud noise in the kitchen" is another example. I think that it's more correct to say that 'it' is a placeholder, than that it refers to a person. We don't know yet if who or what made the noise is Bobby, Mary, a cat, the wind or Michael Myers. | |
| Dec 30, 2020 at 21:31 | history | answered | Jay | CC BY-SA 4.0 |