Dan Krueger wrote:

Lately I've heard constructions of the following form:

"The pitcher had water in...."

My intuition would be to state that as:

"The pitcher had water in it...."

Yours is a good intuition.

Is the "it" really unnecessary?

Yes.

Why is this any different from "teh pitcher had a frame on...."

That expression makes no sense to me (even ignoring the typo). There's an
"it" missing.

--
Skitt
Living in The Heart of the Bay
http://www.ci.hayward.ca.us/