This supposed error is an instance of what Arnold Zwicky has called the Possessive Antecedent Proscription (PAP) (see http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ADS-L&P=R3281&I=-3 and other articles in that thread for extensive discussion on the American Dialect Society List (ADS-L)).  PAP is found in a fair number of handbooks now, and it was mentioned in some 18th c. language advice books.  It doesn’t appear in a modern handbook till 1941, so it is for all practical purposes a fairly recent invention.  The problem is not that one cannot have a pronoun refer to a preceding possessive noun but that one should avoid doing so if ambiguity would result.  In “Mary’s father sent her to Radcliffe,” there is no problem of reference, and many careful writers have written such sentences.  In “Mary’s mother paid her tuition,” it’s not entirely clear whose tuition was paid, and the sentence should be revised.  The problem is not the possessive noun as antecedent but the ambiguity that results from having a possessive noun and a head noun both of which are female.  The PAP is another instance of a grammatical proscription, like “Don’t start sentences with ‘Because’” or “Don’t end sentences with a preposition,” that represents the sort of teaching shortcut participants in this thread have expressed concern about.  A small side note:  “Jamie’” is not an adjective.  Possessive constructions behave like determiners, which puts them in a category with “the.”  I’m aware that some definitions of parts of speech for English do not separate adjectives from determiners, but most grammarians have rejected such a conflation of categories.



Herb



From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jordan Earl

Sent: 2009-05-27 20:03

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Sentences beginning with conjunctions



Can I throw in a question here?  The revised version seems to me to create a new problem... we have only one sentence with a varying start now, and in it, the subject is a pronoun referring back to an adjective in the previous sentence.  I realize that this phenomenon is acceptable in spoken speech and probably happens a lot in writing, but I'm wondering if others out there teaching would point this out to students or let it go...



<Landon is comparing Jamie’s weight to leaves falling.  She has become so sick that she has lost a lot of weight, and he has really started to notice it.>



It seems to me that *she* would work well if Landon were female; alternately, one might begin the second sentence with *Jamie* and solve the problem, as the 2nd *she* would then be clear.



Curious what others think --

--Jordan





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