Anticipatory It or There

We use it when talking about the weather, time, measures and distance:
It is very cold tonight.

It functions as an anticipatory subject for
an infinitive: It is nice to work with you.
an -ing-form: It is good seeing you.
a finite clause: It is astonishing that he refused the offer.

We use there plus a form of to be when in Norwegian we want to say that something exists or is. If we can replace ’det er/det var (ikke)’ by ’det finnes/fantes (ikke)’, we must use there is/was (not) in English.

In such cases there is an anticipatory subject for the real subject (underlined in these examples), which brings something new into the text.

• There is a snake in my garden.
• There is a button on that machine which you can press.
• There are many people here who can neither read nor write.