Charles C. Boycott was an English land agent whose difficult duty it was to collect high taxes from Irish farmers.
I can't understand how it works in this sentence. Does it antecedently refer to "whose difficult duty."
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1 Answer
Charles C. Boycott was an English land agent whose difficult duty it was to collect high taxes from Irish farmers.
If we break the sentence down into two separate clauses, we get:
"Charles C. Boycott was an English land agent. It was his difficult duty to collect high taxes from Irish farmers".
The second clause contains 'extraposition' of the infinitival clause. Compare:
Basic: "To collect high taxes from Irish farmers was his difficult duty".
Extraposed: It was his difficult duty to collect high taxes from Irish farmers.
In the basic version, the subject is filled by the subordinate infinitival clause. In the version with extraposition, the subject position is filled by the dummy pronoun "it" and the subordinate clause appears at the end of the matrix clause in extraposed subject position.
The extraposed element, i.e. the infinitival clause, doesn’t give the meaning (reference) of "it" but serves simply as a semantic argument of the verb phrase.
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So is that the reason that the extraposed elements are called "complement to the verb" rather than "real subject" according to the modern approach？ And similarly in construction It follows that, the content clause doesn't give meaning of i"it". right？– ForOUDec 7, 2019 at 13:42
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@Robbyzhu Extraposed subject, not complement. Yes, to your last question.– BillJDec 7, 2019 at 13:48
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Sorry to bother again, but isn't "it " in "It follows that." also a dummy subject? Why in that case the extraposed element is called complement？– ForOUDec 7, 2019 at 14:33
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Which question actually I have proposed here: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/230106/idiom-it-follows-that– ForOUDec 7, 2019 at 14:36
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@Robbyzhu That is the dummy subject that I was talking about. The extraposed element is not a complement.– BillJDec 7, 2019 at 16:19