no fun with pronouns

Wed Dec 8 18:02:48 UTC 2010

Even if we take the quote out of context, as Barbara and Larry do, we have nothing more than a case of forward reference (I called it DEIXIS, but some would prefer to call it ANAPHORA , aka CATAPHORA), examples of which abound in textbooks (as Larry and Barbara acknowledge). It is a commonplace observation that forward reference is somewhat more difficult to process than backward reference, and the fact that Barbara briefly felt a bit of confusion is not surprising, nor does it seem likely that the degree of her confusion could have been very significant (a number of people have written to me offline to say that they had no trouble whatever interpreting the sentence).

      Again, however (contrary to Robin’s assertion that Victor gave “quite enough” context), even the small degree of “confusion” available in the quote stems almost entirely from the fact that Victor quoted the sentence out of context. In the context of the preceding sentences—see below--it is clear that there is NO FORWARD ANAPHORA WHATSOEVER to cause Barbara any “shock.”

     I suppose it is fair to say (even if it is a commonplace of Freshman English 101) that any sentence containing a sequence of several pronouns and pronoun-like noun usages begins to offer the opportunity for reader confusion about what referents are intended, especially when the referring noun is a number of words away from the antecedent. However, in the case of Victor’s sentences, the (full) context constricts the opportunity for inferring that “the man” refers to anyone other than the antecedent that “his” and “him” refer to (note that it is “the man” and not “a man,” the latter of which, as a more likely introducer of “new” material, would offer some opportunity for inferring that “man” was someone other than Assange).

By the way, the link that VS provided in his original posting did not actually connect to the story that he was quoting. The CORRECT link is

<http://bltwy.msnbc.msn.com/politics/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-1669117.story>.

(VS’s tiny url takes you to a different story: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40544697/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in_security/>).

The larger context is as follows:

WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE ARRESTED

MSNBC Politics, Monday, December 6, 2010, 6:34pm (PST)

LONDON - British police arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Tuesday on a European warrant issued by Sweden, London's Metropolitan Police said.

Swedish prosecutors issued the arrest order for the 39-year-old Australian who is wanted in Sweden on suspicion of committing sexual crimes, which he denies.

His lawyer had earlier arranged to deliver him to British police for questioning in a sex-crimes investigation of the man who has angered Washington by spilling thousands of government secrets on the Internet.

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On December 8, 2010 3:48:00 AM EST, Barbara Need wrote:

Except that I did so interpret it. That is, when I got to the noun

phrase "the man who..." I had a brief shock--I wasn't sure who it

referred to. I was able to figure it out, but the confusion was present.

On 7 Dec 2010, at 2:30 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:

Right. But we don't interpret sentences--especially when they

contain deictics--either in speech or in writing, "in strict

grammatical terms," but in terms of discourse and pragmatics. There

is no way that anyone would be unable to interpret VS's example

exactly the way the speaker intended. This is not always the case,

or course, especially when there is no clarifying context: "Tom gave

Victor his lamb chop" is ambiguous. But there does not appear to be

anything vague or ambiguous about the pronoun reference in the

sentences that VS posted.

On Dec 7, 2010, at 2:15 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:

 But the context (or lack of it, and I think Victor gave quite enough

relevant material) is exactly the point.  We *infer from the

context that "his", "him", and "the man" refer to the same person, but in strict

grammatical terms, there is no reason why this should necessarily

be so.

On December 7, 2010 1:43:33 PM Laurence Horn wrote:

one aspect of the pronominal usage that's potentially noteworthy is

the use of "his" and "him" in that syntactic position with respect to

their apparent antecedent, "the man who..."  Depending on the actual

syntactic frame, this is often impossible ("His mother talked to him

about the WikiLeaks founder") or difficult (in "His teammates resent

him more than the great Yankee shortstop realizes" is a bit tricky to

get backwards co-reference with all 3 nominals referring to Derek

Jeter).  I do find the passage below hard to follow with the intended

co-reference, although if Assange had just been mentioned in the

preceding sentence, it's not impossible.

[in response to Ron Butters:]

Where is the "pronominal confusion"? There are only two pronouns,

both of which refer to some person who was mentioned in context that

Victor does not give. Even "the man who has angered Washington" is

clearly a deictic reference to the same person. There is nothing

remarkable or noteworthy whatever about the sentence (except that we

are not given the immediately preceding context).

------Original Message------

From: Victor Steinbok

Sender: ADS-L

To: ADS-L

Subject: [ADS-L] fun with pronouns

Sent: Dec 7, 2010 6:00 AM

MSNBC's article on Asange's arrest contains the following sentence:

> http://goo.gl/g1ajN

His lawyer had earlier arranged to deliver him to British police for questioning in a sex-crimes investigation of the man who has angered Washington by spilling thousands of government secrets on the Internet.

On Dec 8, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 12/8/2010 03:48 AM, Barbara Need wrote:
>> Except that I did so interpret it. That is, when I got to the noun
>> phrase "the man who..." I had a brief shock--I wasn't sure who it
>> referred to. I was able to figure it out, but the confusion was present.
> 
> I too had a brief hiccup..  Even though I already knew who "the man
> who [had] angered Washington" was -- namely Assange, the same person
> who was just arrested.
> 
> Joel
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org