Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[fw]

What does �it� in the last sentence in the following passage refer to, #1 or #2?
1. to say whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home
2. whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home

Emily *beep* is one of the greatest poets America has ever known. She wrote hundreds, hundreds of poems, but most of them remained unpublished during her lifetime.　It is hard to say whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home.　

First I thought #1, but now I am beginning to wonder if #2 might be correct. What do you, native speakers of English, think?

[dragn]

You could legitimately think of it either way:

[To say whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home] is hard.

=> It is hard [to say whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home].

Or...

[Whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home] is hard to say.

=> It is hard to say [whether these poems were intended to be published or to be kept simply at home].

Take your pick. To be honest, native speakers don't really "think" of it either way. Use of the dummy subject it is so natural for speakers of English that we don't think about it at all. It only serves a syntactic (structural) function, rather than being thought of as referring clearly and specifically to a distinct object.

Hope this makes sense.

Greg

[redset]

I completely agree with Greg here, but just in case you're not asking about the grammatical structure...

There are basically two readings of this sentence:

We don't really know whether the poems were intended for publication or to be kept at home, so it's hard to be sure what the intention was ('it's hard to say').

Maybe we do know what the intention was, but it's hard to say (talk about) what that intention is. Maybe we're not allowed to discuss it, or it's emotionally difficult to speak about it.

With no other context most native speakers would assume the first interpretation - it's hard to say usually means 'I can't be sure', whereas it's hard to talk about usually means 'this is an uncomfortable subject of discussion'.