To me, they both sound okay (the pronoun part, that is—-I
might want to rephrase to avoid the serial prepositional phrases).
There is a grammatical rule that our brains unconsciously
follow about when we use personal pronouns to represent noun phrases: When two identical
noun phrases occur in different clauses within a sentence (or both in the same
clause if one is a possessive noun phrase like "Hrothgar's"), we can
turn either the second one or the lower one into a pronoun.
In other words, we can always pronominalize the second identical noun phrase:
In Hrothgar's speech, he made jokes.
When Hrothgar spoke, he made jokes.
We can also pronominalize the noun phrase in the lower clause or possessive phrase:
In his
speech, Hrothgar made jokes.
When he
spoke, Hrothgar made jokes.
Hrothgar made jokes in his speech.
Hrothgar made jokes when he spoke
But we can’t pronominalize the noun phrase when it is neither second nor lower:
*He
made jokes in Hrothgar’s speech.
*He
made jokes when Hrothgar spoke. (Both are ungrammatical if “he” is
supposed to refer to Hrothgar.)
Dick Veit
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 1:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Syntax question
So I have a question--
A student wrote the following sentence:
In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he gives warning of the corruption of
the desire for fame.
Can anyone explain why it sounds better to say instead:
In his speech to Beowulf, Hrothgar gives warning of...
I can explain that sometimes the antecedent will follow rather than
precede a pronoun, but that doesn't address why it sounds/is preferable
in this case.
Jane Saral
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/