[Pan-users] Re: OT: English [was Re: Re: freeze, high CPU getting new headers]

[Greg Lee]

On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:31:26 +0000, walt wrote:

> 4. (Gram.) The noun to which a relative refers; as, in the
>  sentence "Solomon was the prince who built the temple," prince is the
>  antecedent of who.
>  [1913 Webster]

That is not a great definition for grammatical antecedent,
since it (the definition, that is) applies only to a specific
case.  More generally, the antecedent of a definite pronoun
like "he, she, it, ..." is an entire noun phrase, not just
a noun, and sentences can also be antecedents for "it" (as
in "Does it surprise you?" as a continuation of this very
sentence).  Sometimes it may appear that a noun is the
antecedent of "it", but this is just an accident of an
example in which a noun phrase is made up of a single noun.
The sentence of mine that you incorrectly criticized is
like that -- "pan" is a noun phrase consisting of the single
proper noun "pan".

-- 
Greg