Основы теории английского языка. Листунова Е.И. - 99 стр.

       a) They — meaning an indefinite group of people:
       They say that the hills on each side of the stream here once
joined and formed a barrier... (Jerome). They say I am like my father,
grandmother (Dickens).
       In corresponding Russian sentences the subject is not expressed:
       Ãîâîðÿò, ÷òî ÿ ïîõîæà íà îòöà, áàáóøêà;
       b) We, you, one — meaning any person, people in general:
       You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teach-
ers (Maugham). We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older (Eliot).
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood
in it... (Eliot). Here one could wander unseen (Bronte).
       Compare with corresponding Russian sentences:
       We must not allow children al- Ìû íå äîëæíû ðàçðåøàòü
        ways to do what they please,          äåòÿì...
       One is always pleased to meet          Âñåãäà áûâàåøü ðàä
        old friends,                          âñòðåòèòü ñòàðûõ äðóçåé.
       In some cases the passive form is used when the subject of the
action is indefinite:
       Children must not be allowed always to do what they please.
       4. An impersonal sentence is a sentence whose predicate does not
refer to any person or thing.
       In English the pronoun it is used as subject in impersonal sentenc-
es, but this it is practically meaningless, it does not indicate any person
or thing and is a purely grammatical formal subject. In the sentence It is
raining we do not associate the process of raining with any actual agent,
we think of it as going on by itself, as a spontaneous process (ñòèõèéíûé
ïðîöåññ). Verbs like to rain, to snow had originally no subject. But in the
course of time the pronoun it was introduced as subject to make these
sentences comply with the usual type of sentence in English.
       The corresponding impersonal Russian constructions have no
subject whatsoever:
       It is early. — Ðàíî. It was very warm. — Áûëî î÷åíü òåïëî. It is
drizzling. — Ìîðîñèò. It is far to the railway station. — Äî ñòàíöèè äàëåêî.
       The impersonal it is used in sentences denoting:
       a) Natural phenomena:
       It was a soft spring night dark and starlit (Voynich). In among the
apple trees it was still dark... (Galsworthy). It was glorious spring weather
(Gissing). By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily
(Dickens). It was October, drizzling and dark... (Galsworthy).
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