Johanna, I had indeed the pronoun/antecedent order reversed in my rendition of "the original sentence," and was thinking of it as "In his speech to Beowulf, Hrothgar gives...." Mea culpa. Now, however, I'm wondering why one order produces a perception of redundancy while the other doesn't -- is it the information gap produced by the cataphoric arrangement in that latter version, or is it the absence of the potential for the kind of ambiguity that you pointed out? The cataphoric type certainly does occur in mature writing. I'm staying agnostic about whether the anaphoric type never occurs in polished prose; wider context may have more of an effect than the local structure itself. Although your point about ambiguity still holds, I think the following would not sound *quite* as bad: "In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he sounds resigned, but in his speech to Aethelflaethet, he adds a note of urgency." The cataphoric version still sounds better, though: "In his speech to Beowulf, Hrothgar sounds resigned, but in his speech to Aethelflaethet, he adds a note of urgency." In the full original version ("In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he gives warning of the corruption of the desire for fame"), the "warning....fame" portion is awkward as well. I wonder if that's intensifying people's reactions to the first part. Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University PS -- Yes, I made up Aethelflaethet. -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 5:23 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Syntax question Let's clear up a few things here -- the original sentence under discussion was precisely the kind Bob and I have been talking about. I don't have it exactly, but the name appeared first: "In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he ... " I objected only to the repeition of reference to Hrothgar, once via proper name and again via pronoun. I have no objection to introductory adverbials; they are fine orienters and feature in good writing. My main objection is stylistic -- as Bob notes, I doubt such structures appear much in mature writing. Novice writers spread info over excess syntactic units in other ways, too. However, there is a slight possibility of confusion, depending on context. The "he" might refer to a person mentioned in the speech; the proximity of male-marked "Beowulf" might also distract the rapidly-processing brain as it seeks antecedents for "he" (let's not forget that nouns nearer the verb than the "simple subject" are the prime culprits in subject-verb agreement errors). The context is not forgiving in the student examples I have seen. If it were, as I have said before, I would not even notice the structure as infelicitous. As to topic-comment, this terminology appears in some writing manuals with reference to structures such as "My father, he seldom votes". They are labeled outright ungrammatical, which I find a little extreme. I view the Beowulf example as similar. Topic-comment syntax is standard in some languages. A rough example I recall from my structure-of-Chinese course is "Elephant, nose is long", which would be translated as "Elephants have long noses". I can imagine a novice writer writing something like "As far as elephants, they have long noses". Considering introductory adverbials "topical" is not standard in discussions of syntax or writing, so far as I know. They are seen as orienting devices, and also can be connectors to what went before. I occasionally have students in my 300-level class who have never had to write a term paper before. In the main, those who have written papers have not been well-trained, or perhaps not held to high standards. A large number of them are going to be teaching writing, if they obtain their teaching credentials. Unfortunately, my class is not a writing class. It is a content class, and the students hand in a final draft of their term papers. For this reason, I advise them on how to check their papers for aspects of mature style before handing them in. I also urge them to use our writing lab and provide a list of typical problems. Lastly, with tongue in cheek and apologies to Bill McCleary, an illustration of how the structures under discussion slip into less-formal writing ... " For students who have not written a term paper before, they are overwhelmed." : ) Johanna Rubba, Assoc. Prof., Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo, CA 93047 Tel. 805.756.2184 Dept. Tel. 805.756.6374 Home page: 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/ 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/