Questão FC478699
Is other a verb?
Gramática (Grammatics)
FGV · 2025
Is other a verb?
Like many English words, other possesses great flexibility in meaning and function. Over the past few centuries, it has served as an adjective, an adverb, a noun, and a pronoun. In recent decades, other has increased its part-of-speech portfolio to include verb use, having acquired the meaning "to treat or consider (a person or a group of people) as alien to oneself or one's group.” Some people find it disconcerting when a word takes on a new part of speech, a process known as functional shift. The phenomenon is quite common, however -- our language contains many thousands of words which are reported to have been formed in this fashion.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/other.
In the sentence taken from the text “Over the past few centuries, it has served as an adjective, an adverb, a noun, and a pronoun”, the pronoun in bold letters refers to the word “other”. Sometimes, though, “it” does not have a referent and serves a grammatical function only, thus being named, for example, “dummy it”. Mark the alternative in which “it” has a referent.
- When I left the office, it was way past midnight.
- I like it better when I don’t have to worry about driving to the beach.
- Would it be possible to leave now?
- It is too late to try to fix what was damaged.
- The weather is beautiful today, isn’t it?
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Na frase "The weather is beautiful today, isn’t it?", o pronome it tem um referente explícito: refere-se ao substantivo the weather, sujeito da oração principal.
Em tag question, o pronome retoma o sujeito e concorda em pessoa e número. Como the weather é terceira pessoa do singular, usa-se it na pergunta curta isn’t it?.
Portanto, aqui it não é vazio: cumpre a função anafórica de retomar um elemento já mencionado, permitindo a confirmação da informação expressa na oração principal.
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