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Examples (linguistics: expression referred to by pronoun)
In “The policeman asked the boy what he was doing.”, the phrase “the boy” is the antecedent of the pronoun “he”.
In the sentence “I saw my girlfriend yesterday wearing her old jacket which is odd because she almost never wears it.”, the phrase “my girlfriend” is the antecedent of “her” and “old jacket” is the antecedent of “it”.
The Boston agent added that this clerk was a young man of wholly unquestioned veracity and reliability, of known antecedents and long with the company.
1926, H. W. Fowler, “that rel. pron.”, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, reprint of the first edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 634, column 2:
[W]hereas it might seem orderly that, as who is appropriated to persons, so that should have been appropriated to things […] the antecedent of that is often personal
1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 117:
One such condition can be formulated in terms of the c-command relation defined in (9) above: the relevant condition is given in (16) below: (16) C-COMMAND CONDITION ON ANAPHORS An anaphor must have an appropriate c-commanding antecedent
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