>  I am frequently struck by how a seemingly
> routine revision can throw the delicate workings of a sentence
unexpectedly
> out of whack.
>
> Brock
>


I'm not the least bit surprised by that, Brock.  It happens to me all the
time.  Every time I revise a syllabus or a lesson assignment.  I discover it
just after I hand it out to a whole class of admiring students.

Jeff Glauner
Park University


>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MAX MORENBERG
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: 8/10/00 5:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Backward pronominalization
>
> Today's CINCINNATI ENQUIRER ran a story about a woman who was beaten and
> abused on a country road in southwest Ohio some weeks ago.  She is now
> recovering and is looking for the driver who, seeing the brutality on
> the
> road,  called the police on his cell phone.  She wants to thank the
> "Samaritan" publicly.
>
> That's all as background for the grammatical issue at hand.  The
> newspaper
> item included the following sentence: "The anonymous good Samaritan
> probably saved Ms. Payne's life, the 46-year old Fort Thomas woman says,
> and ended an hour-long, savage attack from an assailant she had met in a
> local bar."
>
> The sentence seems to me strangely constructed because it has Ms. Payne
> as
> a genitive noun (Ms. Payne's") rather than using "her."  It seems as if
> there are two different women involved. Don't you suppose that the
> reporter
> or copy editor was following a "rule" he/she remembered from somewhere
> that
> said pronouns must follow the nouns they refer to?  But as this thread
> on
> backward pronominalization has indicated, anaphora is a good deal more
> complicated than that.
>
> I thought the sentence was an interesting commentary on our discusssion.
>
> Max
>
> **************************
> Max Morenberg
> Professor
> Department of English
> Miami University
> Oxford, OH 45056
> [log in to unmask]