"In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he gives warning of the corruption of the desire for fame." It's interesting to know that the prohibition on this kind of cataphor is invented. I would object to the sentence on stylistic grounds. The two potential male antecedents should be avoided, even though the context makes clear which one "he" refers to. Apart from that, my problem with the sentence is that the sentence is a typical topic-comment structure. These occur with annoying frequency in the writing of my students. I believe they are an instance of speech-like structure being transferred to writing. Students tend to spread information out over the clause more than is necessary for a reader. A more-compact structure would be "In his speech to Beowulf, Hrothgar gives warning of the corruption of the desire for fame." or "Hrothgar, in his speech to Beowulf, gives warning of the corruption of the desire for fame." Both of these place the proper name in subject position, which is better stylistically if Hrothgar is the current topic. Similar structures that occur in my students' writing are along the following lines: "In Deborah Tannen's book 'You Just Don't Understand', she claims that ... " or, even worse, "In the book 'You Just Don't Understand', it states that ..." The "dummy subject" of the latter example just adds words. Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/