Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 April 16

= April 16 =

Can I use a pronoun before introducing its antecedent?
Can I use a pronoun in a sentence before I introduce its antecedent? For example, is something like “Because of her attitude, many people dislike the club president” permitted? If so, what are the restrictions on this usage? Primal Groudon (talk) 02:23, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Examples are legion throughout the literature, and your example is fine.
 * The trick is not to fall into the trap of stranding the connected parts. If your example had been: "Because of her prejudice, Mary dislikes the club president", it might at first glance seem to be saying that Mary is the one with the prejudice, but you may have meant the club president (assuming she was female). --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  02:36, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes. This is called cataphora, while the more common backreferencing is anaphora. --Theurgist (talk) 02:49, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Notice that in most examples, the pronoun is in a subordinate clause preceding the main clause of the sentence. AnonMoos (talk) 15:09, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * It could be in the main clause, though. "Her height contributed to Alta's success at basketball."  (But not "Her height led Victoria to select Alta", which is ambiguous.) --142.112.220.50 (talk) 22:41, 16 April 2024 (UTC)


 * True, but it's kind of a variation on a theme -- the pronoun "her" is embedded inside the subject of the main clause, but is not itself the subject of the main clause. AnonMoos (talk) 20:31, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The main clause of an English declarative sentence usually starts after with the subject, so if there is no clause preceding the main clause there is hardly a spot a cataphoric pronoun referring to its subject could occupy. But an adverbial (not itself being a clause) can precede the subject of a main clause: "At the time of his death, O'Connor had just started research on a new topic." A question allows an inversion, also creating room for a cataphora referring to the subject: "How much of his effort had Jonathan invested in making this promise come true?" --Lambiam 19:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)


 * The responses above are good, but note that the terminology varies. "Cataphor(a)" can indeed be contrasted with "anaphor(a)", but some linguists define the latter more broadly, to encompass what above is called "cataphor(a)". And an "adverbial" is also called an "adjunct". 118.18.141.213 (talk) 07:20, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Not all adverbials are adjuncts, and next to adverbial adjuncts there are also noun adjuncts. --Lambiam 13:36, 19 April 2024 (UTC)