English has a lot of rules.

Very often we are forced to throw in a garbage word like “it” or “that” just to fill up an implied object slot. For instance, “It’s raining.” What is raining? Dunno. Rain is falling, that’s really all there is to it. Too bad, English needs a noun.

“It” as a Direct Object

I saw a friend’s twitter post today—I love it when clients ask for whimsical designs. Imagine getting paid to draw superheroes!

We could avoid the silly “it” placeholder in this sentence by saying something like “When clients ask for whimsical designs, I am happy.”   However, the point seems lost, and no one wades through that noun phrase long enough to get to the verb (the point of the utterance).

In this utterance, the most salient point is that he loves something.  So, for the sake of clarity, we use the simple “I love X” structure.  In english, “it” is our X.

After setting out the basic function “I love (it),” we are required to define the (it) variable, it if has not already been defined in a local context.  This leads to the structure: I love (it); it==”when clients ask for whimsical designs”

Is it needed?

Is what needed?  We have been defining too many it’s in the local context.  Do we need to use “it” in this sentence?

It seems acceptable; it==”to say ‘I love when clients ask me…’”  However, leaving out “it” in this fashion seems a little awkward.  Does he actually love the time at which clients ask him this?  Does he love the moment they send the email?  Or was it the second he read the email that he so enjoyed?  I think he actually loves the overall situation—the request, the design process, the pay check, and telling us twitterers about it.

I Love it when it refers to a Vague Event

In this case, and in many others, (it)==the situation that follows when Y occurs.  The Y variable is often appears as “when” in english.

So now, lets see how the sentence looks when filling in the variables with their definitions.

Original:

I love (X (Y=”clients ask for whimsical designs”))

Expanded:

I love the situation that follows when clients ask for whimsical designs.