funny pronouns

[victor steinbok]

Given the history of this narrative, I have little doubt that "he" is
Nixon and this is the correct interpretation. In a nonhistorical
context, however, the ambiguity is obvious.

> In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with A,
> a senior adviser who had just told B
> that he had always had “a little prejudice,”
> B said he was not prejudiced but continued:
> “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”

I would argue that the second "he" is also ambiguous, although I would
give this ambiguity a different weight--more likely  (>50%) that B was
the referent. If I were assigning weights to the first "he", I would
expect A to be >50%, even though in this particular case the referent
appears to be B (I would expect about 60-40 split in the general case
and 10-90 split in the particular case). Of course, I am just pulling
the numbers out of thin air as an illustration. For a better idea of
the actual split, it would be interesting to run the sentence past a
few subjects with different backgrounds. Of course, there is the usual
problem--how to run both examples through the same subject--either one
may prejudice the outcome of the other. A 2x2 design might work better
than a straight one (just like with regular polling).

VS-)

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
>
> YES, INDEED. The pronoun reference is unclear. Better:
>
>> In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles W.
>> Colson, a senior adviser who had just told Nixon
>> that THE PRESIDENT had always had “a little prejudice,”
>> Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued:
>> “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”

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