Antecedent (grammar)

In grammar, an antecedent is an expression (word, phrase, clause, sentence, etc.) that gives its meaning to a pro-form (pronoun, pro-verb, pro-adverb, etc.). A proform takes its meaning from its antecedent, e.g. Ava arrived late because traffic held her up. The noun her refers to and takes its meaning from Ava, so Ava 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.

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

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. 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.

The ante- in antecedent means 'before, in front of'. Thus when a proform precedes its antecedent, the antecedent is technically not an antecedent, but rather it is a postcedent, post- meaning 'after, behind'. The following examples illustrate postcedents:

Postcedents are rare compared to antecedents, and in practice, the distinction between antecedents and postcedents is often ignored, the term antecedent being used to denote both. This practice is a source of confusion and some have therefore denounced the term antecedent outright because of this confusion.

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