Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

winky · Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 44 Location: China

First of all,let's look at some sentences.
1.The box is too heavy for him to carry. (T)
2.The box is too heavy for him to carry it. (F)
3.The job is more than I could do myself. (T)
4.The job is more than I could do it myself. (F)

I only know sentence 1 and 3 are correct,and sentence 2 and 4 are wrong.
However,I don't know why!
Could you explain it to me?
Many thanks!
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bud · Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 2111 Location: New Jersey, US

I'm not sure this is much of an explanation, but here goes (until a better one comes along):

A pronoun is just a shortcut so that you don't have to keep saying what it refers to, which is almost always more cumbersome to say than the pronoun. So let's look at the sentence without using "it."

"The box is too heavy for him to carry the box." I'm not sure the sentence is wrong, but it certainly is awkward. "The box" is already in our focus, so there is no need to repeat it. There is no chance that we would be confused about what he would carry - if he could.