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Antecedent (grammar) 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.
The forms of verbs used in the antecedent and consequent are often subject to particular rules as regards their tense, aspect, and mood. Many languages have a specialized type of verb form called the conditional mood – broadly equivalent in meaning to the English "would (do something)" – for use in some types of conditional sentences.
Antecedent (logic) An antecedent is the first half of a hypothetical proposition, whenever the if-clause precedes the then-clause. In some contexts the antecedent is called the protasis. [ 1] Examples: This is a nonlogical formulation of a hypothetical proposition. In this case, the antecedent is P, and the consequent is Q.
In English conditional sentences, the antecedent (protasis) is a dependent clause, most commonly introduced by the complementizer if. Other complementizers may also be used, such as whenever, unless, provided (that), and as long as. Certain condition clauses can also be formulated using inversion without any conjunction; see § Inversion in ...
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language discusses the prescriptivist argument that they is a plural pronoun and that the use of they with a singular "antecedent" therefore violates the rule of agreement between antecedent and pronoun, but takes the view that they, though primarily plural, can also be singular in a secondary extended sense ...
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language.This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.. This article describes a generalized, present-day Standard English – a form of speech and writing used in public discourse, including broadcasting, education, entertainment, government, and news, over a range of registers, from formal to ...
The element in the main clause that the relative pronoun in the relative clause stands for (house in the above example) is the antecedent of that pronoun.In most cases the antecedent is a nominal (noun or noun phrase), though the pronoun can also refer to a whole proposition, as in "The train was late, which annoyed me greatly", where the antecedent of the relative pronoun which is the clause ...
English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. [1]