it-extraposition with nsubj

[nschneid]

Extraposition of nominal subjects in English is rare. CGEL gives the following account:

We have just three instances annotated as extraposed nsubj:

"What" extrapositions

• It remains unclear what might explain such gains [GUM]
• It is always interesting what spin the press will take. [EWT]

These two could be parsed as interrogative clauses (csubj), rather than free relatives (nsubj), which would make the tree consistent with extraposed that-clauses. To illustrate another kind of interrogative, "whether" cannot head a free relative, but a whether-clause is fine here ("It remains unclear whether such gains are accidental").

The nsubj analysis is further suspect because paraphrasing the first one with a clear-cut NP is iffy:

• ?It remains unclear the explanation of such gains.

If somebody said that I would guess they were a nonnative speaker—perhaps because the meaning does not lend itself so well to an exclamatory reading.

"It takes (time) for (activity)"

• it usually takes 20mins for a mezza luna, as they have to add pure delicious extract to the mix. [EWT]

This is analyzed as nsubj(takes, mins), but that feels wrong because "20 mins" cannot be substituted for "it". A paraphrase is "A mezza luna takes 20 mins", but that ignores the "for". Can we say that this verb has an expl and obj but no subject deprel? (From an English-centric perspective it does have a subject—the expletive—it's just pleonastic, like "It's raining.")

[gossebouma]

The 'what' cases are analyzed as expl + csubj in the Dutch treebanks.

Dutch-LassySmall : https://universal.grew.fr/?custom=6593c54a5241a
Dutch-Alpino : https://universal.grew.fr/?custom=6593c64c90000

The expl+copula + predicate + csubj construction is rather frequent in Dutch with several clause types as csubj (ie dat (that), wat (what), of (whether), and te (to) infinitives.

[amir-zeldes]

If it were "it usually takes 20mins for a mezza luna to do xyz", I would say it's expl + csubj. But in this example, the lack of the to infinitive makes me read the 'it' as non-pleonastic, but actuallt anaphoric - there is something that takes 20 minutes. Looking at the preceding context, it might be "teh wait time" (sic)?

[nschneid]

The context is a restaurant order:

you can call em ahead of time, and then go to pick up ur food, or have it delivered**.
that cuts down on teh wait time, cus u can do other stuff while ur waiting.
it usually takes 20mins for a mezza luna, as they have to add pure delicious extract to the mix.

I interpret this as "it usually takes 20 minutes for [them to make] a mezza luna". It's a sort of metonymy - using a participant in an event to stand for the event as a whole.

I'm not sure I want to go so far as to call this extraposition with ellipsis, though (that would be the csubj approach). Syntactically I guess this is just "take" licensing a pleonastic "it" subject plus object plus for-oblique. In UD, as I understand it, we are using expl for pleonastic "it" subjects even when there is no nsubj or csubj (e.g. "it rains").