Antecedents pronoun agreement

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surendra
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Antecedents pronoun agreement

Post by surendra »

A mother beat up her daughter because she was drunk.
Antecedent?
why?
I need an explanation.
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Joe
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Re: Antecedents pronoun agreement

Post by Joe »

surendra wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 7:11 pm A mother beat up her daughter because she was drunk.
Antecedent?
why?
I need an explanation.
Not sure what your question is.

The problem with your sentence is that the antecedent to the pronoun “she” is ambiguous. The antecedent is the person or thing that a pronoun represents. But in your sentence is “she” the mother or the daughter? Was the mother drunk or was the daughter drunk?

The sentence needs to be rewritten for clarity.
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surendra
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Re: Antecedents pronoun agreement

Post by surendra »

Thank you.
ghellman
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Re: Antecedents pronoun agreement

Post by ghellman »

In similar situations, I often prepend each pronoun as it appears, with an index.
"IF
a [first] person causes harm to a another [second] person
THEN
that [second] person may petition a [third] person for a redress of that [second] person's grievance"

It makes for a unconventional presentation, but it avoids all ambiguity, if that is what is desired.
patron
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Re: Antecedents pronoun agreement

Post by patron »

CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF THIS METHOD PLEASE.
ghellman
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Re: Antecedents pronoun agreement

Post by ghellman »

GIVEN any description of a situation with many entities (persons, places, or things),
IF that situation is depicted graphically,
THEN each entity may be assigned an arbitrary ordinal index [first], [second], etc.

In subsequent text statements about the situation, prepend those indices to each entity.

In successive drafts, those prefixes may become redundant, and may be happily discarded,
IF any prefixes remain,
THEN the author may choose to use personal names for least ambiguity.
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