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In grammar, an antecedent is one or more words that establish the meaning of a pronoun or other pro-form. [1] For example, in the sentence "John arrived late because traffic held him up," the word "John" is the antecedent of the pronoun "him." Pro-forms usually follow their antecedents, but sometimes precede them.
He had three genders in Old English, but in Middle English, the neuter and feminine genders split off. Today, he is the only masculine pronoun in English. In the 18th century, it was suggested as a gender-neutral pronoun, and was thereafter often prescribed in manuals of style and school textbooks until the 1960s. [6]
The antecedent usually precedes the pronoun, either in the same sentence or in a previous sentence (although in some cases the pronoun may come before the antecedent). The pronoun may then be said to "replace" or "stand for" the antecedent, and to be used so as to avoid repeating the antecedent. Some examples: John hid and we couldn't find him.
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and ...
When the antecedent is a specific person (whose gender is therefore known), the correct referring pronoun is either he or she, depending on the person's gender. When the antecedent is a specific group of two or more people, the pronoun they is used, again without any difficulty arising.
The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent. For example, in the sentence That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat, the meaning of the pronoun he is dependent on its antecedent, that poor man. The adjective form of the word "pronoun" is "pronominal".
The choice of relative pronoun typically depends on whether the antecedent is human or non-human: for example, who and its derivatives (whom, whoever, etc.—apart from whose) are generally restricted to human antecedents, while which and what and their derivatives refer in most cases to things, including animals.
The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. [1] Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns.