This supposed error is an instance of what Arnold Zwicky has
called the Possessive Antecedent Proscription (PAP) (see http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ADS-L&P=R3281&I=-3
and other articles in that thread for extensive discussion on the American
Dialect Society List (ADS-L)). PAP is found in a fair number of handbooks now,
and it was mentioned in some 18th c. language advice books. It
doesn’t appear in a modern handbook till 1941, so it is for all practical
purposes a fairly recent invention. The problem is not that one cannot have a
pronoun refer to a preceding possessive noun but that one should avoid doing so
if ambiguity would result. In “Mary’s father sent her to Radcliffe,” there is
no problem of reference, and many careful writers have written such sentences.
In “Mary’s mother paid her tuition,” it’s not entirely clear whose tuition was
paid, and the sentence should be revised. The problem is not the possessive
noun as antecedent but the ambiguity that results from having a possessive noun
and a head noun both of which are female. The PAP is another instance of a grammatical
proscription, like “Don’t start sentences with ‘Because’” or “Don’t end
sentences with a preposition,” that represents the sort of teaching shortcut
participants in this thread have expressed concern about. A small side note: “Jamie’”
is not an adjective. Possessive constructions behave like determiners, which
puts them in a category with “the.” I’m aware that some definitions of parts
of speech for English do not separate adjectives from determiners, but most
grammarians have rejected such a conflation of categories.
Herb
From: Assembly for the
Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jordan
Earl
Sent: 2009-05-27 20:03
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sentences beginning with conjunctions
Can I throw in a question here? The revised version
seems to me to create a new problem... we have only one sentence with
a varying start now, and in it, the subject is a pronoun referring back
to an adjective in the previous sentence. I realize that this
phenomenon is acceptable in spoken speech and probably happens a lot in
writing, but I'm wondering if others out there teaching would point this out
to students or let it go...
It seems to me that *she* would work well
if Landon were female; alternately, one might begin the second
sentence with *Jamie* and solve the problem, as the 2nd *she* would then
be clear. Curious what others think -- --Jordan |
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