Which sounds more natural, "I visited it" or "I visited there"

[mogu]

If there is a word signifying a place in an aforementioned sentence, I'm not sure which word is more natural to indicate the place after the verb "visit" in the following sentence, "it" or "there." For instance, "I have been to New York before. I visited it three times." or "I have been to New York before. I visited there three times." Grammatically speaking, the verb "visit" is commonly used as a transitive verb (at least I was taught as it is), so it should be followed by a noun or pronoun. Therefore, "it" should be correct because "there" is basically an adverb (although there are some dictionaries in which it is also listed as a pronoun). That said, "there" sounds more natural to me in this case. Please let me hear native English speakers' opinions.

 

[konungursvia]

Re: Which sounds more natural, "I visited it" or "I visited there"

It's a good question. 'There' might be preferable to 'it' in your New York example, but I agree both sound doubtful in some way, especially since you change from the present perfect to the preterite. Quite common in AmE, but not such eloquent speech. In any case, the first sentence of your example actually reminds me of artificial text-book speech, the type of utterance you're not really likely to hear in any case, but which may appear in a learner's phrase book.

Formal: "I have been to New York. In fact, I've visited [there/it] three times."
Informal AmE: "I've been to New York. Three times."

 

[MikeNewYork]

Re: Which sounds more natural, "I visited it" or "I visited there"

If there is a word signifying a place in an aforementioned sentence, I'm not sure which word is more natural to indicate the place after the verb "visit" in the following sentence, "it" or "there." For instance, "I have been to New York before. I visited it three times." or "I have been to New York before. I visited there three times." Grammatically speaking, the verb "visit" is commonly used as a transitive verb (at least I was taught as it is), so it should be followed by a noun or pronoun. Therefore, "it" should be correct because "there" is basically an adverb (although there are some dictionaries in which it is also listed as a pronoun). That said, "there" sounds more natural to me in this case. Please let me hear native English speakers' opinions.

In your proposed use, dictionaries classify "there" as a noun, meaning "that place".