Posted by rfvv on Wednesday, September 3, 2014 at 7:22am.
Posted by rfvv on Friday, August 29, 2014 at 11:22pm.
1.Thank you for visiting our nursing home. It was great fun last weekend.
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In Sentence 1, what does 'It" refer to?
2. Look at the elderly person.
3. Look at the elderly people.
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Are both OK? Is Sentence 2 grammatical? Can we use the singular noun after 'elderly'?
English - PsyDAG, Friday, August 29, 2014 at 11:46pm
1. The visit.
Elderly can be used to modify both.
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Thank you for your help.
1.Thank you for visiting our nursing home. It was great fun last weekend.
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In Sentence 1, what does 'It" refer to?
(Q1: You said it refers to 'the visit.' Can it also mean 'visiting our nursing home'? Or Is 'it' an impersonal pronoun?)
(Q2: What does 'last weekend'modify? What is the part of speech of 'last weekend'? Is 'last weekend' an adverbial phrase or an adjective phrase?)
English - Writeacher, Wednesday, September 3, 2014 at 7:48am
"It" is one of those impersonal nouns, but yes, it seems to modify "visiting..." (the whole phrase).
The phrase "last weekend" is adverbial, telling when the action happened.
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Thank you for your help.....
The following is my first question.
In the second sentence, does "It" in "It was great...." mean "visiting our nursing home" or 'The visit"? Or does it mean 'an impersonal pronoun which refers to an ambiguous situation or thing?
1. Thank you for visiting our nursing home. It was great fun last weekend.
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In Sentence 1, what does 'It" refer to?
I thought I already answered this ... as did PsyDAG.
It's an impersonal pronoun, which seems to refer to the whole idea of "visiting our nursing home" or simply to the visit itself.
Thank you for your explanation.
In my opinion....if "It" refers to "visiting our nursing home' or "the visit," then "It" might/may mean "a
< personal > pronoun"? Am I wrong?
I'd refer to "it" as impersonal, for two reasons:
1. There is not just one noun that is its antecedent.
2. It doesn't refer to a person.
In Sentence 1, the pronoun "it" refers to the whole phrase "visiting our nursing home." It is an impersonal pronoun that doesn't have a specific antecedent. It is used to refer to a general idea or situation in the sentence. So in this case, "it" is used to refer to the experience of visiting the nursing home.
As for the second part of your question, "last weekend" as used in Sentence 1 is an adverbial phrase. It answers the question "When did the great fun happen?" and modifies the verb "was" in the sentence. It tells us that the fun took place during the specific time frame of last weekend.