1104: Word-Order and Rearranged SVO Dec 17, 2017

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Impersonal pronouns, such as 'it' in "it is raining" allow English speakers to—among other things—maintain the most common word-order in the language of subject-verb-object (SVO). Not only that, but also, even when rearranging the order of words in a sentence, the word-order is maintained with impersonal pronouns. The sentence "Elizabeth likes tiramisu" is in SVO order, but it could be rearranged with the object first for the purpose of adding focus to the direct object; this could be done with the passive ("tiramisu is liked by Elizabeth"), but it is also possible to start (sort of) with the object in the active voice. This would theoretically appear as "is tiramisu that Elizabeth likes", however, the pronoun 'it' is necessary to make this grammatical, so while more focus is placed on the object in the rearranged sentence "it is tiramisu that Elizabeth likes", the impersonal pronoun still is a subject in the first position.

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