| 词组 | pronoun with possessive antecedent |
| 释义 | pronoun with possessive antecedent Bernstein 1971 has an article under this heading in which he quotes from three books a rule applying to the construction; stated most baldly it goes "a pronoun cannot take as an antecedent a noun in the possessive case." Bernstein is not very impressed by the cogency of the rule, and he is right not to be, but it can be found enunciated in other handbooks—in Barzun 1985, Simon 1980, and Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982, for instance. We have not discovered where this rule originated, but it is likely to have been with one of those 18th-cen-tury appliers of logic to language. We get a hint of this sort of origin from Barzun: • ... there can be no logical link between a proper name in the possessive case and a personal pronoun. "Wellington's victory at Waterloo made him the greatest name in Europe" is all askew, because there is in fact no person named for the him to refer to. Right away you can see something missing from this analysis. In the first place, you have no trouble understanding the sentence; if it is illogical, at least its meaning is as plain as day. Second, you can see that the whole problem can easily be removed by changing him to his and greatly increasing the elegance of the sentence. But wait—isn't his a personal pronoun too? Yes, but at least it's in the possessive case and matches Wellington's. It must be all right for a possessive pronoun to refer to a possessive noun, proper or not: • ... Bob Tizzy ... filed St. Boniface's nose smooth with his face —W. M. Thackeray, The Book of Snobs, 1846 • Your daughter's feet are nearly ruined by her shoes —Paula Fox, A Servant's Tale, 1984 Clearly the objection has to be to a pronoun in some other case referring to a noun in the possessive case. That can be viewed as illogical. But this sort of logic (which is only Latin grammar in disguise) does little more than impose an unnecessary burden on the writer. When the reader clearly understands what is written, what more logic is needed? The reader knows that Wellington is in the writer's mind even if, as Barzun contends, he is not technically there in the sentence. The reader ignores the technicalities, understands, and reads on. A kind of notional agreement has been in operation. Bernstein quotes the first of his three sources to the effect that the rule is little respected by writers. A little looking around shows that indeed it is not: • It was Mr. Squeers's custom to call the boys together and make a sort of report, after every half-yearly visit to the metropolis, regarding the relations and friends he had seen —Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839 • ... shaking Snooks's hand cordially, we rush on to the pier, waving him a farewell —W. M. Thackeray, The Book of Snobs, 1846 • Strafford's enemies were in deadly earnest, because while he lived they and all they strove for were in jeopardy —G. M. Trevelyan, A Shortened History of England, 1942 • My father tried valiantly to wrest Pittsburgh Phil's title from him —Frank Sullivan, The Night the Old Nostalgia Burned Down, 1953 • ... played on Hull's mounting fear that he and his men would be cut off —James MacGregor Burns, The Vineyard of Liberty, 1981 • I just hope the people who make up the President's schedule don't arrange any more breakfast meetings for him —And More by Andy Rooney, 1982 Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982 has an example of the construction in which the relative pronoun who refers to the possessive antecedent. The example is awkward indeed, to the point of sounding rather implausible. Yet we have a genuine example of the construction; it is old and similarly awkward-sounding, but still easily understandable. • I do not at all mean to detract from Garrick's merit, who was a real genius in his way —Horace Walpole, letter, 1 Feb. 1779 Bernstein says the rule can be ignored where it does not interfere with sense. We agree. But we would not recommend Walpole's construction, which sounds awkward to the modern ear. |
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