PSAT Glitch
George Thompson
george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Wed May 14 14:53:53 UTC 2003
This sentence seems right to me. Can the critic see the subject as "genius" and not "Morrison", and so want the pronoun to be "it"? If so, a bizarre analysis.
GAT
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 10:22 am
Subject: PSAT Glitch
> In today's Washington Post, there is an article about a
> purported error in the PSAT (which I believe is the Preliminary
> Scholastic Aptitude Test). Educational Testing Service came under
> fire for scoring the following sentence as free of grammatical
> errors: "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that
> arise from and express the injustice African Americans have endured."
>
> The question is not whether "injustice" should be
> "injustices"; the Post made the word plural in its account,
> apparently inadvertently. Rather, the question is whether "her"
> is used correctly when its antecedent is the adjective "Toni
> Morrison's." A Maryland high school journalism teacher named
> Kevin Keegan argues that this is incorrect. The Washington Post
> article is online at
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51947-2003May13.html
>
> Keegan's rule (for which there apparently is support in
> some but not all grammar manuals) strikes me as difficult to
> defend. I can see no way to recast the sentence without worsening
> it. "Toni Morrison's genius enables Toni Morrison . . ." is
> awkward, while "Toni Morrison's genius enables the writer . . ."
> is ambiguous because "the writer" may not be Toni Morrison. Toni
> Morrison could be, for ought that sentence tells us, a literary
> agent or a prior writer like Shakespeare.
>
> Keegan's view is not supported by the online dictionaries
> I have at hand. The OED says a pronoun is used "when that which
> is referred to is known from context or usage, has been already
> mentioned or indicated, or, being unknown, is the subject or
> object of inquiry." Merriam-Webster says a pronoun's "referents
> are named or understood in the context." American Heritage says a
> pronoun "designates persons or things asked for, previously
> specified, or understood from the context."
>
> Any thoughts?
>
>
> John M. Baker
>
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