NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Weather verb

A weather verb is a special verb form found in English and certain other languages which, in its basic sense, is capable of taking only a dummy pronoun as its subject. It is called a weather verb since most verbs of this type are used in reference to weather activity; for instance, It's raining, It's snowing, It's cold, etc. A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A dummy pronoun (or, more formally, pleonastic pronoun) is a type of pronoun used in non-pro-drop languages, such as English, when a particular argument of a verb is nonexistent, unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise not to be spoken of directly, but a reference to the argument (a... The subject of a verb is the argument which generally refers to the origin of the action or the undergoer of the state shown by the verb. ... Composite satellite image showing the progress of a hurricane weather system approaching the east coast of America Weather comprises all the various phenomena that occur in the atmosphere of a planet. ...

Weather verbs are common in other non-pro-drop languages; e.g. in German, as Es regnet ("it rains"). The situation is different in pro-drop languages, such as Italian, which do not require dummy pronouns. However, a similar process occurs in these languages: The Italian Piove ("rains"), which has no subject, is semantically identical to the English It's raining. Pro-drop language (from pronoun-dropping) is a language where pronouns can be elided (deleted) when considered unnecessary or redundant by the speaker. ... In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ...

Weather information - Search.com (1639 words)
	The fundamental causes of weather are thus surface temperature, and to a lesser extent, elevation.
	Weather does occur in the stratosphere and does affect weather lower down in the troposphere, but the exact mechanisms are poorly understood [1].
	Because of the large effect that weather has on day-to-day life and due to the impossibility of any type of forecasting before the advent of modern technology, a large body of folklore aimed at trying to explain the weather has grown up, some of which is fairly accurate, most less so.

verb Information Center - linking verbs (833 words)
	A similar verb phrases type of verb, the verb test weather verb, exists in English, but its verb non-pro-drop nature requires that a dummy pronoun be used.
	In languages where verb quiz in subject verb agreement lesson plans the verb is inflected, it often agrees transitive verbs with its primary argument (what we tend to call the subject) in person, number and/or gender.
	English only shows verb games distinctive agreement in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs (which is marked by adding "-s"); the rest of the persons are not distinguished english verb tenses in the verb.

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