Re: The opposite of resumptive

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 01:50:47 +0200, Remi Villatel <maxilys@...> wrote:
>I'm stumbling on a grammatical term. Everybody knows what a resumptive
>pronoun is, it sums up something that has already been mentioned in a
>sentence or a conversation. Now, how do I call a pronoun or an
>expression that is used as a shorthand for something that still has to
>be expressed?
>The boy hit the ball. I saw it. ("it" is resumptive.)
>I saw this: The boy hit the ball. ("this" isn't resumptive.)
>Prosumptive? (Google finds it but it has nothing to do with grammar.)
>Presumptive? (Not exactly what I'm looking for.)
>There must be natlangs or conlangs which use such a sentence structure.
>This is the way Shaquelingua totally avoids subordinate clauses but I
>realized that my use of "resumptive" was wrong in such a case.
>If ANADEW, there must be a word, otherwise a neologism is all what's
>left. Err... Two neologisms since I also need a word for the class
>containing both the resumptive and the "anti-resumptive".
>Remi Villatel
>maxilys_@_tele2.fr
I'm not sure what the difference is between "resumptive" and "anaphoric";
but based on my not-necessarily-correct formerly existing impression, what
you are calling "resumptive" is what I had been calling "anaphoric".

An "anaphoric" pronoun carries one back to what has been said before.
Its opposing notion is a "cataphoric" pronoun, which stands for something
to be mentioned in more detail later.

(Similar to the "forward" part of declarations in Pascal.)

----

Chomskyians distinguish between "pronouns" and "anaphors", and wouldn't
recognize the term "anaphoric pronoun" as anything but a contradiction in
terms.  I have absolutely no idea what they think is the difference between
an anaphor and a pronoun.  I get the idea that an anaphor is (to a
Chomskyian) something like what a reflexive pronoun is to everyone else.
But I'm not sure.

In any case, if that's so, then a Chomskyian wouldn't agree that what you
had described as "resumptive" is what most people mean when they
say "anaphoric".  But most people probably go by the definitions Ray Brown
gave you in his reply, though most probably couldn't quote them.

----

The usual opposite of "re" is "pro", isn't it?  Even if it isn't usually,
it seems to be in the pair "reactive" vs "proactive".  I don't know if
there is such a word as "prosumptive"; but maybe you could coin it, as
suggested by you and some of the other responders.

-----
eldin

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