The ‘it’ in ‘It’s going to rain’ is supposed to be pleonastic, meaning it’s just a dummy word used to satisfy the grammatical requirement that sentences have a subject.
pleonastic — Adjective: 1. (not comparable) Of, or relating to pleonasm., 2. Redundant., 3. Characterised by the use of redundant words or an excessive number of words. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pleonastic
Perhaps ‘pleonastic’ isn’t the right word.
But people say,
A: What's the weather going to do?
B: It's going to rain later today.
But not B: The weather’s going to rain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_pronoun
"The weather's going to do",
"It's going to ..".
The parallelism is coincidental?
‘The weather’s going to rain’ is not said. But, ‘The weather’s going to get better/worse’ is said.
According to the wikipedia article, Dwight Bolinger argued that ‘it’ is implied to mean “the local weather”.
A: Was it nice out today?
B: No it rained.
He’s arguing semantically, not grammatically. He’s saying what does the ‘it’ in ‘it rained’ refer to. He’s not saying ‘The local weather rained’ is grammatical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impersonal_verb seeks to get around the problem of a lack of independent participnts with distinct semantic roles.
It says, in ‘It’s snowing’ the participating snow is non-specific and lacks a clear semantic role.
What about the phrase, ‘the weather going to do’, other than in the question, ‘What’s the weather going to do’
In a quick google search, I could only find in a Len Deighton novel, “* Hello, Kevin. So is the weather going to do it ?*
No instances of ‘the weather’s going to rain/snow’, I imagine, but some for ‘Is the weather going to be cold’
Giving up on ‘weather(’s)? going to do’ and checking ‘weather(’s)? going to be’ ..
“What’s the weather going to be?” ?? Seems like something’s missing.
They’ll draw big half circles to show us what the weather’s going to be around the Great Lakes area, but it doesn’t seem to matter to them if the chalk catches a little bit of Nebraska and a corner of Tennessee.
I would say, “What’s the weather going to be LIKE?”
“How will the weather be tomorrow?” TOEIC test prep book question with answers: Snowy, rainy, cold, or hot.
“(It|The weather)’s going to be ADJECTIVE.” seems like it’s OK, but “The weather’s going to VERB” is not OK.
I see google book hits for ‘how ADJECTIVE will the weather be?’ Or was it ’how ADJECTIVE is the weather going to be?" ?
There’s an equivalence between
'The weather was cold on the mountain last night,'
and
'It was cold on the mountain last night.'
That doesn’t exist between,
'The weather was bad on the mountain last night,'
and
'It was bad on the mountain last night.'
In the first one, the wikipedia article on impersonal verbs says temperature expressions tend to lack independent participants with distinct semantic roles.
The second one, the bad conditions in ‘It was bad on the mountain last night,’ could be other than weather conditions.
Like road conditions, or some event on the mountain.
“The weather was rainy” sounds wrong, but “the rainy weather” is OK. And, “It was rainy” is OK.
Thanks to commenters on the ##English channel on the freenode IRC network. Comments there.
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