"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." One of the reasons that sentence is confusing is that it is an indirect quotation presented in a way that is normally used for direct quotations. Since it is an indirect quotation, the phrase "Ms. Payne's life" occurs in what is technically a dependent clause governed by "the .. woman says [that]." In other words, this seems to illustrate the rule that backward pronominalization is normal in dependent clauses. On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Haussamen, Brock wrote: > An interesting sentence, and very likely hypercorrected as Max speculates. > I was wondering about another scenario: perhaps originally there had been a > direct quote involved--"He probably saved my life"--which was changed, "Ms. > Payne's" replacing "my," without an awareness that the new sentence sounded > as if it referred to two women. I am frequently struck by how a seemingly > routine revision can throw the delicate workings of a sentence unexpectedly > out of whack. > > Brock > > > -----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] >