It is worth reading the book.
=The book is worth reading.
I have learned that the two sentences carry the same meaning and "It" there functions as a dummy it.
And then I was wondering if "The book" is replaced with a pronoun "It", like "It is worth reading", does "It" here function as a dummy it too, or "It" is a pronoun of "The book" so it just means the book?
Or "The book is worth reading" is okay to use but "It is worth reading" is grammatically wrong?
What do you native English speakers think? Thank you so much as usual in advance.
Hans51I was wondering if "The book" is replaced with a pronoun "It", like "It is worth reading", does "It" here function as a dummy it too [No.] , or "It" is a pronoun of "The book" so it just means the book? [Yes.]
Hans51Or "The book is worth reading" is okay to use but "It is worth reading" is grammatically wrong?
They are both right whether you use 'the book' or 'it' to refer to the book.
— I just read a book. It was pretty good.
— So it was worth reading? (it = the book) ("pronomial it", not "dummy it")
— Yes. I'll lend it to you if you want.
CJ
Thank you so much.
How about this expression “It is worth it”?
The front It is a pronoun of something and the latter it is nothing but an idiom?
What do you think? Thank you so much again.
Yes, the first 'it' is a pronoun, but the other 'it' is another pronoun, though it can be more vague in what it refers to. You might consider 'it's worth it' an idiom when the reference is vague.
— I'm going to pay $50 for a ticket to that concert.
— Really? Is it worth it? ('it'1 = the concert ticket; 'it'2 = $50)
— Yes, I think it's worth it. (as in previous line)
— Bob has a medical check-up every year. He says it's worth it.
('it'1 = the check-up; 'it'2 is vague, maybe something like 'trouble': It's worth the trouble.)
CJ
I can't agree. "It is worth reading the book" is ungrammatical. You need an adjective after the copulative "is", and "worth" is not one. You could just about get away with "It is worthwhile reading the book", but that sounds like an awkward way of saying a plain "The book is worth reading", where "worth" is a preposition.
Wrong. See below.
Did you just grab all that from the page below?
.....bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv271.shtml
So says Roger Woodham, whoever that is. The BBC is not a very good authority for English, anyway. I hope you can post a few standard examples of this structure, because it just sounds dead wrong to me.
Whether 'worth' is a preposition or an adjective that takes an object has been argued back and forth for some time. I doubt anything is to be gained by resurrecting that controversy.
In any case, everybody and his brother are using it. fraze.it and the Google Ngram Viewer both have thousands of examples.
It is worth ______ ...
noting, remembering, considering, pointing, doing, noticing, looking
CJ
That isn't the formula I object to. That would be "It is worth noting the car", It is worth remembering the Alamo", "It is worth considering the alternatives", etc.