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In grammar, an antecedent is an expression (word, phrase, clause, etc.) that gives its meaning to a pro-form (pronoun, pro-verb, pro-adverb, etc.).〔Definitions of "antecedent" along these lines can be found, for instance, in Crystal (1999:20) and Radford (2004:322)〕 A proform takes its meaning from its antecedent, e.g. ''Susan arrived late because traffic held her up''. The pronoun ''her'' refers to and takes its meaning from ''Susan'', so ''Susan'' is the antecedent of ''her''. Proforms usually follow their antecedents, but sometimes they precede them, in which case one is, technically, dealing with ''postcedents'' instead of antecedents. The prefix ''ante-'' means 'before' or 'in front of', and ''post-'' means 'after' or 'behind'. The term ''antecedent'' stems from traditional grammar. The linguistic term that is closely related to ''antecedent'' and ''proform'' is ''anaphora''. Theories of syntax explore the distinction between antecedents and postcedents in terms of binding. ==Examples== Most any syntactic category can serve as the antecedent to a proform. The following examples illustrate a range of proforms and their antecedents. The proforms are in bold, and their antecedents are underlined: ::a. Willy said he likes chocolate. - Noun as antecedent ::b. My eccentric uncle likes chocolate. He tells everyone to buy him chocolate. - Noun phrase as antecedent ::c. Larry was helpful, and so was Kim. - Adjective as antecedent ::d. He arrived in the afternoon, when nobody was home. - Prepositional phrase as antecedent ::e. Thomas plays soccer in the park. The kids all congregate there. - Prepositional phrase as antecedent ::f. Our helpers did it very carefully, and we did it like that as well. - Adverb phrase as antecedent ::g. Fred works hard, but Tom does not do the same. - Verb phrase as antecedent ::h. Susan lies all the time, which everybody knows about. - Entire clause as antecedent ::i. Our politicians have been pandering again. This demotivates the voters. - Entire sentence as antecedent ::j. Someone called who offered to help. She was really friendly. - Discontinuous word combination as antecedent ::k. The paragraph has in fact been checked by Sam, but Susan won't do it. - Discontinuous word combination as antecedent This list of proforms and the types of antecedents that they take is by no means exhaustive, but rather it is intended to merely deliver an impression of the breadth of expressions that can function as proforms and antecedents. While the stereotypical proform is a pronoun and the stereotypical antecedent a noun or noun phrase, these examples demonstrate that most any syntactic category can in fact serve as an antecedent to a proform, whereby the proforms themselves are a diverse bunch.〔Carnie (2013:150) defines antecedent as ''an NP that gives its meaning to another NP''. Carnie's definition is too narrow, as many of the examples here illustrate. Antecedents (and proforms) are not limited to the noun or noun phrase categories.〕 The last two examples are particularly interesting, because they show that some proforms can even take discontinuous word combinations as antecedents, i.e. the antecedents are NOT constituents. A particularly frequent type of proform occurs in relative clauses. Many relative clauses contain a relative pronoun, and these relative pronouns have an antecedent. Sentences d and h above contain relative clauses; the proforms ''when'' and ''which'' are relative proforms. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Antecedent (grammar)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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