PSAT Glitch

[Arnold Zwicky]

so far we've gotten back to follett 1966.  and what follett says
is hedged:
 >A noun in the possessive case, being functionally an adjective, is
 >seldom a competent antecedent of a pronoun
note the "seldom".

what follett doesn't explain is why the fact that something is
functionally an adjective should make it dubious as the antecedent of
a pronoun.

erik wensberg's 1998 revision of follett is less nuanced, though it
presupposes that possessives as antecedents of pronouns are actually
frequent:

 Perhaps the possessive noun is the part of speech most often
 mistaken for an antecedent.  _On the Vice President's arrival at
 Kennedy Airport, he explained to reporters that..._  The pronoun
 _he_ could represent _the Vice President_ (no _'s_), because both
 are in the nominative case.  But the possessive _Vice President's_
 is no _he_; it serves as an adjective.  Rewrite: _The Vice President,
 on his arrival... explained_.  To be sure, a possessive noun can be
 the antecedent of a possessive pronoun, since _both_ act as
 adjectives: _The Vice President's explanation was made on his
 arrival_.  (p. 29)

the assumption appears to be that an anaphoric element must be the
same part of speech as its antecedent.  but even if follett and
wensberg had some independent justification for this claim, the claim
is just false as it stands: since _his_ acts like an adjective,
according the follett and wensberg, it should be incompatible with
clearly nominal antecedents, but *nobody* objects to sentences like
_The Vice President removed his hat_.  so i'm still puzzled about the
rationale for the proscription.

by the way, according to MWDEU, bernstein (1971) "is not very
impressed by the cogency of this rule" and notes that it is "little
respected by writers".

burchfield (1998, a revision of the 1996 edition) in The New Fowler's
Modern English Usage (p. 629) explicitly rejects the proscription and
a justification for it based on some kind of agreement between anaphor
and antecedent:

 _The role of pronouns_.  A pronoun is a 'word used instead of and
 to indicate a noun already mentioned or known, esp. to avoid
 repetition'([Concise Oxford Dictionary] 1990.  The definition is
 sound for most ordinary pronominal uses, so long as 'noun' is taken
 to include 'noun phrase', and so long as it is understood that
 the antecedent does not have to be the exact equivalent of the
 pronoun itself.

burchfield goes on to discuss barzun's (1985) "Wellington's victory
at Waterloo made him the greatest name in Europe" example, maintaining
that "a reader (or listener) would have no difficulty in making the
necessary morphological adjustment."  but then burchfield probably
counts as a linguist, and he even cites the big quirk et
al. Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language with approval,
so prescriptivists would probably disdain him as much as they do
MWDEU.

crews 1992, the sixth edition of The Random House Handbook, has a
section that *sounds* like it's going to trot out the possessive
proscription - "Make sure the antecedent is a whole term, not part
of one" (p. 482) - but all of crews's DON'T examples involve pronouns
referring back to the first noun of a noun-noun compound:
  Alexander waited at the train station until it came.
  The peanut jar was empty, but Bobo was tired of nibbling them anyway.
  He was opposed to gun control because he felt that every citizen
    should have one in case the cops staged a surprise raid.
  [in an exercise] She favored paper recycling because it could be
    used again for many purposes.
i'm no happier with these examples than crews is, though i'd offer
a semantic account rather than a structural one, since examples like
  He took the Manchester train, even though he didn't intend to go
    there.
sound fine to me.  but that's another topic.

back on antedating the possessive proscription.  i can get it back at
least one more year, to 1965, in stewart h. benedict's revision of
Harper's English Grammar, which is listed as still being the work of
the author of the 1941 edition, john b. opdycke.  (so maybe we can get
back to 1941, depending on whether what follows was written by opdycke
or added by benedict.)  this is delicious:

 There are expressions, to be sure, in which repetition of a noun
 is required, where the substitution of an agreeing pronoun will
 not do.  In _Mary's mother says that she doesn't think she cares
 to go to the party_, the reference of the pronouns is somewhat
 confused...  There is a good grammatical rule to the effect that
 a pronoun cannot take as an antecedent in the possessive case.  This
 makes it impossible, therefore, for either _she_ to refer to
 _Mary's_ [though the intention is surely for the second _she_ to
 refer to Mary].  But since this rule is little respected by writers
 and authors--if indeed, known--such a sentence as this must be
 reconstructed if it is to be made entirely clear to the average
 understanding. (p. 50 in my 1983 paperback edition)

so the proscription had some currency, in certain grammatical
circles at any rate, in 1965 (or possibly 1941).

what's so odd is that there could be a "good grammatical rule"
that is not only "little respected by writers and authors" but
possibly not even known by them.  this is an instance of what
dennis preston has called the "exteriority" assumption, the idea
that language and grammar exist somehow outside of individual
speakers and social groups - either in (Platonic) Heaven or in
some sort of Language Court, depending on whether you think that
grammar is a set of truths revealed to the devoted or a set of
laws codified by authorities.

in any case, all the other sources i've checked have no mention
of the possessive proscription, though they all offer decent
advice about avoiding pronouns with ambiguous reference when that
mislead your audience.  these sources are:
  Norman Foerster & J.M. Steadman.  1931.  Writing and Thinking.
     Boston: Houghton Mifflin. [my dad's college handbook]
  John M. Kierzek.  1939.  The Macmillan Handbook of English.
     NY: Macmillan.  [Foerster & Steadman and Kierzek have a family
     resemblance that is surely not accidental.]
  Vincent F. Hopper, Cedric Gale, Ronald C. Foote, & Benjamin
     Griffith.  2000.  Essentials of English.  5th ed.  Hauppage
     NY: Barron's.  [a reprint of a 1961 book]
  William F. Irmscher.  1972.  The Holt Guide to English.  NY:
     Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
  John C. Hodges, Winifred B. Horner, Suzanne S. Webb, & Robert K.
     Miller.  1994.  Hodges' Harbrace College Handbook.  12th ed.
     Fort Worth TX: Harcourt Brace.
  Paul W. Lovinger.  2000.  The Penguin Dicionary of American
     English Usage and Style.  Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin
     Books.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)