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Before I embraced descriptive grammar it would really grind my gears when I heard, usually from someone with a US American accent, phrases like "I hate when that happens". "Hate is a transitive verb!" I would yell.

(To my knowledge it's not normal to drop it in "UK English".)

However, these days I'm more mellow. My left eye twitches but I pinch myself and remember that language evolves.

Which leads me to my questions. I've seen the dummy object eroded from phrases involving love

  • I love when you give me a kiss
    — Ordinary Alphabet: Poems by an ordinary girl, p. 107, Michelle McNair, Bloomington (Indiana): Author House.

  • I love when she screams to the audience
    — Tell Them That I Love Them: A Story of Grace and Redemption, p. 206, Angela Sanders, Euclid (Ohio): Sandstorm Publishing.

and hate

  • I hate when that happens
    — Letters to My Sister, p. 61, Maxine Oliveres, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh): Red Lead Press

  • I hate when people try to take advantage of me
    — If You Could See What I See, p. 93, Cathy Limb, New York (New York): Kensington Publishing Crop.

in "American English". Is it only dropped before a conjunction, or is it OK to drop it at other times? Is it only love and hate where it gets dropped, or are there other verbs that lose the dummy pronoun?

Matt E. Эллен
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  • I can't drop the it there myself. It sounds weird to me. – tchrist Nov 17 '17 at 14:48
  • Related:https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/134005/i-like-it-that-vs-i-like-that – user 66974 Nov 17 '17 at 14:54
  • Possible duplicate: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18454/i-hate-when-vs-i-hate-it-when – user 66974 Nov 17 '17 at 14:58
  • That doesn't seem like a duplicate. I'm asking when it's permitted to drop it, that asks if it's correct or just common usage (and some unrelated stuff). – Matt E. Эллен Nov 17 '17 at 15:03
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    Would you say, for example, I remember it when he arrived or I understand it why she left? I always felt the it was superfluous in such constructions from a very early age (1980s Southern California), and having trained myself not to say it, loathed [it] when others did say it. – choster Nov 17 '17 at 15:28
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    Yeah. I'm not sure about this question now. I think I've noticed a weirdness in UK English, not American English. – Matt E. Эллен Nov 17 '17 at 15:55
  • @choster: But those should be dependent questions: a separate category that normally does not have an antecedent. It's quite different from **I hate when: the verb hate* is normally connected with a subordinate clause using that, not when as is possible with dependent questions. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Nov 17 '17 at 16:03
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    I'm guessing based on this ngram search that including the "it" is a pretty recent phenomenon. So maybe the question is: When did it become more idiomatic to write "I love it when" or "I hate it when" whereas other transitive verbs seem not to use "it." – RaceYouAnytime Nov 17 '17 at 21:24
  • I found a citation showing this usage isn't strictly American: George Bernard Shaw, 1883: "I never said you had no heart," protested Jane ; " but I hate when you speak like a book." - An Unsocial Socialist. – Mark Beadles Nov 17 '17 at 22:57
  • It's clearly not just love and hate as such: at the very least, any verb that has a similar meaning to one of those two (loathe, detest, adore, like, abhor, etc.) function similarly. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 18 '17 at 01:36

2 Answers2

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"I hate when that happens" is a transitive usage of hate. The object is the clause "when that happens".

Compare "I know he is lying", where "he is lying" is the object of the transitive know. Also "People say Roberta Flack is a great singer", where "Roberta Flack is a great singer" is the object of the transitive say.

Mark Beadles
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Speaking solely from my own experience of hearing it in AmE, this is a somewhat perverse usage that entered my awareness sometime in the mid-1980s. It was used as a kind of Zeitgeist meme, and with the same kind of relish pop culture aficionados use for that sort of utterance, and I recall thinking it must have been from some sort of TV show (like the "dy-no-mite!" meme originated by actor Jimmie Walker on an American television show).

Again, to the best of my recollection it was used precisely because it was so perverse sounding. People would say it for emphasis (and for the nudge of recognition it engendered in the listener) because that hint (okay, more than a hint) of discordance, as well as for its tag-like quality. Google NGrams shows its use in print peaking around the early '90s, and its frequency even at that peak was still only around 75% that of "I hate it when that happens."

Robusto
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    George Bernard Shaw, 1883: "I never said you had no heart," protested Jane ; " but I hate when you speak like a book." is an early non-American (though non-English) example. – Mark Beadles Nov 17 '17 at 22:54