Antecedent (grammar)
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In grammar, an antecedent is the noun or noun phrase to which a pronoun refers. In these sentences, the antecedent is in bold:
- I met John at the party. He was telling me about his new girlfriend.
A common stylistic problem in writing, often leading to ambiguity, is the use of a pronoun for which the antecedent is not clear, as in the following example:
- I met John at Mike's party. He told me about his new girlfriend.
Did John tell the speaker about his own new girlfriend? Did John tell the speaker about Mike's new girlfriend? Did Mike tell the speaker about his own new girlfriend? Or did Mike tell the speaker about John's new girlfriend? Strictly speaking, "he" should refer only to "John" (a rule of prescriptive grammar states that pronouns in the nominative case, like "he" and "she," cannot refer to an antecedent in the genitive case), but in ordinary speech, listeners are still confused by such sentences. Occasionally, the antecedent may be entirely missing, as when someone wonders out loud: "I wonder where I put it?", with no clear antecedent for the pronoun "it."
Antecedents are of particular importance in connection with relative pronouns; the pronoun usually opens the relative clause, but the antecedent is located in the main clause.
- The family that prays together stays together.
- As I was going up the stairs, I met a man who wasn't there...
In the above example, the antecedent precedes the relative pronoun directly. In English this need not always be the case:
- A situation has arisen that calls for immediate action.
The antecedent is here separated by the verb. Different languages employ this to varying degrees. For example, in Arabic and Hebrew it is not permitted at all (the antecedent must always come right before the relative pronoun or conjuction or clause), in English it is used to avoid awkward constructions, and in German such separation is frequent because of the shunting of the verb to the end of the sentence in many cases. In Spanish, it is often used after the verb, preceding an adjective (dependent) clause (i.e., Busco UNA NOVIA que sea sensible.).
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