PSAT Glitch

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:59 PM -0700 5/16/03, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>still working on the history of this proscription.  here's geoff
>nunberg's first stab at it, in mail to the stanford linguistics
>department:
>  >PS As best I can tell, this rule was popularized if not originated
>  >by Wilson Follett's 1966 Modern American Usage. In the article on
>  >"antecedents," Follett says (I've used quotation marks in place of
>  >his italics):
>
>  >A noun in the possessive case, being functionally an adjective, is
>  >seldom a competent antecedent of a pronoun: "On F's arrival from
>  >Virginia at La Guardia Airport last night, he denied to reporters
>  >that..." "F." would legitimately lead to "he"; "F's" cannot.
>  >Reconstruct, then: "F, on his arrival, denied..."

Note that Follett slyly puts the "incompetent" antecedent into a
subordinate clause.  Compare the more natural "F's so-called rule
proves that he knows nothing about grammar."

Part of what's going on here in "competence" testing for antecedents
has to do with information structure; a genitive within a
prepositional phrase ("On F's arrival...") is too backgrounded to
serve as a likely antecedent for a pronominal.  I don't think that
matching case has much to do with it--"F's denial was made on his
arrival" is perhaps a nice half-rhyme, but does NOT involve a
comparable subordination.  A parallel  frame to that in the
proscribed sentence, with subordinated antecedent but case-matched
pronominal--e.g. "On F's arrival from Virginia, his sister denied to
reporters that..."--doesn't strike me as any more natural than
Follett's example.

Larry