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The following are two example sentences of "versus" in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

The first question: Is the "it" a dummy subject in both?

The second question: Could the "it" be replaced by "the match" in the first sentence and "the dilemma" in the second?

It is France versus Brazil in the final.

It was the promise of better job opportunities versus the inconvenience of moving away and leaving her friends.

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  • Is "the match" supposed to be in the first sentence and "the dilemma" in the second? I don't see those phrases. Jan 13 at 3:17
  • I was asking if "the match" and "the dilemma' could be used instead of "it' in those sentences.
    – Apollyon
    Jan 13 at 3:21
  • Oh. Please edit your question then to make that clear. "Refers to" doesn't necessarily mean "can be replaced by". Jan 13 at 3:22
  • @MarcInManhattan Question(s) updated
    – Apollyon
    Jan 13 at 3:43
  • I don't think you can really say without more context. For example, if the second sentence were preceded by "What was on her mind?" then the it is definitely not a dummy, because it refers to "The thing that was on her mind."
    – stangdon
    Jan 13 at 14:11

1 Answer 1

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Neither "it" seems to refer to any specific thing that the reader would be expected to know of, so yes, I'd consider both to be dummy pronouns. (In Wikipedia's language, I'd say it doesn't "provide a contextually explicit meaning of its referent", and in Wiktionary's language, I'd say it doesn't have "a specific referent".)

Note that the second sentence seems incomplete without some context; something like this would be more common:

It was the promise of better job opportunities versus the inconvenience of moving away and leaving her friends that convinced her to stay with the company.

In this case, the that-clause has been "extraposed" from the subject position (which is now occupied by the dummy pronoun "it").


In casual speech, one might say "the match" and "the dilemma" in each of those sentences. However, I think that that would be imprecise. (For example, the first sentence would say "the match is France", but a match is not a team.) I might instead say:

The match pitted France versus Brazil in the final.

The dilemma concerned the promise of better job opportunities versus the inconvenience of moving away and leaving her friends.

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  • Is the following okay? A: Why does Mary look so troubled? B: It is the promise of better job opportunities versus the inconvenience of moving away and leaving her friends.
    – Apollyon
    Jan 13 at 4:47
  • @Apollyon Yes, the context from the first sentence makes the second sentence sound much better. Jan 13 at 10:41

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