antecedent (n.)

A term taken over from TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR, and used for a linguistic UNIT from which another unit in the SENTENCE derives its interpretation (ANAPHORIC REFERENCE), typically a later unit. In particular, personal and relative PRONOUNS are said to refer back to their antecedents, as in The car which was parked . . . It was . . . An instance where the anaphor is to more than one NOUN phrase is said to be a split antecedent, as in Mike suggested to John that they should leave. Antecedent-contained deletion refers to cases where the antecedent of an ELLIPTICAL phrase itself contains an elliptical phrase. For example, in Mary read every book John did, the elliptical VP after did is contained in the antecedent VP, read every book John did. This kind of construction is problematical, because if one tries to reconstruct the elliptical VP, the reconstructed form will contain another elliptical VP, and this goes on ad infinitum.