Re: Question about anaphora

>I mention the lack of grammatical gender because I sense that it will be
more
>difficult to design satisfying anaphora for such a language. In the
sentence
>"There is a problem and a solution. It came to my mind yesterday." it is
not
>clear whether the problem or the solution is addressed. In German I would
>simply use the grammatical gender of either the problem or the solution
>because luckily they would be different in my example sentence.
In Swedish, there's one set of pronouns that refer back to the subject of
the previous clause, and another that refers back to the last noun (or else)
of that clause. (Den/det/de refers to subject, denna/detta/dessa refers back
to the last noun).

So, we're having
Bilen rullade över gatan. Den stannade plötsligt. (The car rolled over the
street. It stopped suddenly).
Bilen rullade längs gatan. Denna krökte sig plötsligt.(The car rolled along
the street. It bent (itself) suddenly. (=the street bent),

"There is a problem and a solution" is a bit trickier. Both are, as we all
know subjects. I'd simply use the first pronoun to refer to the first
subject, and the second pronoun to refer to the second subject, but there's
of course possible clauses where there'll be various degrees of ambiguity.

Conversely, you could be editing the first clause - "there is a problem and
there is a solution" - and make a rule that implies that the last clause
always is referred back to.