On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:31:26 +0000, walt wrote: > 4. (Gram.) The noun to which a relative refers; as, in the > sentence "Solomon was the prince who built the temple," prince is the > antecedent of who. > [1913 Webster]
That is not a great definition for grammatical antecedent, since it (the definition, that is) applies only to a specific case. More generally, the antecedent of a definite pronoun like "he, she, it, ..." is an entire noun phrase, not just a noun, and sentences can also be antecedents for "it" (as in "Does it surprise you?" as a continuation of this very sentence). Sometimes it may appear that a noun is the antecedent of "it", but this is just an accident of an example in which a noun phrase is made up of a single noun. The sentence of mine that you incorrectly criticized is like that -- "pan" is a noun phrase consisting of the single proper noun "pan". -- Greg _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
