It's remarkable what ...

[Flyby]

The setences below are from the book 'Atomic Habit'. I understand the meaning of them clearly, but i don't know what grammar rules are applied to these sentences. The position of the adjective 'remarkable' seems odd to me because adjectives are usually placed before nouns and after articles.


It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.
It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working.
It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training.
It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning

 

[jutfrank]

These sentences all have delayed subjects.

It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.
It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working.
It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training.
It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning.

The bold part in each case is the delayed subject. The pronoun It is acting as dummy in the normal subject position.

 

[5jj]

I have changed the subject line of your question, @Flyby. It now contains a reference to what the question is about.

 

[teechar]

The sentences below are from the book 'Atomic Habit'. I understand the meaning of them clearly, but I don't know what grammar rules are applied to these sentences.

adjectives are usually placed before nouns and after articles.

Usually, but not always. Take a look at the following link.

Attributive and Predicative Adjectives @ The Internet Grammar of English

 

[PaulMatthews]

The sentences below are from the book 'Atomic Habit'. I understand the meaning of them clearly, but i don't know what grammar rules are applied to these sentences. The position of the adjective 'remarkable' seems odd to me because adjectives are usually placed before nouns and after articles.

[1] It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.

[2] It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working.

[3] It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training.

[4] It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning.

There’s no doubt that [1] is a straightforward extraposition construction where the underlined interrogative content clause is an extraposed subject. Note, though, that in Extraposition the ”it” is a dummy element serving the syntactic purpose of filling the subject position; the extraposed element doesn’t give the meaning (reference) of "it" but serves simply as a semantic argument of the VP.

[2]-[4] are more interesting since generally NPs cannot be extraposed. Nevertheless, the NPs here are an exception in that they can actually be extraposed. This is probably attributable to the fact that they all have same form. i.e. ‘the + N + relative clause’ and are thus ‘concealed questions’, roughly equivalent to the interrogative clauses how you can build your business … / how you can build your body … / how you can build knowledge …. .

 

[Tarheel]

Let me add that that those sentences are unremarkable. Allow me to provide another example. (See below.)

It's amazing what you can accomplish if you just keep working at it and don't give up.

Why would you phrase it that way?

 

[Rover_KE]

The sentences below are from the book 'Atomic Habit' ...

... by whom?