Chapter 2 - Grammatical Foundations: Structureother positions English pronouns have the accusative form (me, him, her, us, them –
you and it are the same in nominative and accusative):
(43) a I/he/she/we/they will consider the problem
b Robert recognised me/him/her/us/them
c Lester never listens to me/him/her/us/them
d Conrad considers me/him/her/us/them to be dangerous
In (43a) the pronouns are the subject of the finite clause and are in their nominative
forms, in (43b) they act as the complement of the verb (a position which we will return
to), in (43c), complement of a preposition and in (43d) subject of a non-finite clause
containing the infinitive marker to, and they are in their accusative forms.
A further grammatical fact about the subject of the finite clause is that it is always
present. That this is a grammatical fact is most clearly shown by the fact that if there is
no need for a subject semantically, a grammatical subject which has no meaning has to
appear:
(44) it seems [that Roger ran away]
The verb seem has just one argument, the clause that Roger ran away, which acts as its
complement. Thus from a semantic point of view there is no subject argument here. Yet
there is a subject, the pronoun it, which in this case has no meaning. Note that this it is
not the same as the one that refers to a third person non-human, as in the following:
(45) it bit me!
With (45) one could question the pronoun subject and expect to get an answer:
(46) Q: what bit you? – A: that newt!
With (44) however, this is not possible because the pronoun does not refer to anything:
(47) Q: what seems [that Roger ran away]? – A: ???
These meaningless subjects are often called expletive or pleonastic subjects, both
terms meaning meaningless.
The appearance of an expletive element is restricted to the subject position. We do
not get an expletive in a complement position of intransitive verbs, which do not
subcategorise for a complement:
(48) a Sam smiled it (Sam smiled)
b Sue sat it (Sue sat)
The subject of non-finite clauses is a little more complex as there are occasions
where they are necessary and hence an expletive must appear if there is no semantic
subject, and there are other cases where the position must be left empty, even though
there is semantic interpretation for it:
(49) a I consider [it to be obvious who the murderer is]
b *I consider [- to be obvious who the murderer is]
(50) a Terry tried [- to escape]
b *Terry tried [himself to escape]