Literary notes about antecedent (AI summary)
In literature, the term “antecedent” is employed in a variety of ways to denote something that comes before or that serves as the basis for what follows. In grammatical discussions, it refers to the noun or group of words to which a pronoun or relative clause relates, as seen in discussions of pronoun agreement and clause placement ([1], [2], [3]). Beyond its technical use in grammar, “antecedent” is also applied more broadly to indicate prior conditions or events that set the stage for later developments, whether in philosophical discourse or historical narrative ([4], [5], [6]). This dual usage illustrates the word’s versatility, functioning both as a marker of referential connection in language and as a concept denoting causality or precedence in broader theoretical contexts ([7], [8], [9]).
- It is of the masculine gender, singular number, and third person, agreeing with its antecedent, he .
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by Frank Edgar Farley and George Lyman Kittredge - The relative pronoun should come, as a rule, immediately after its antecedent.
— from The Elements of Style by William Strunk - Who is a relative pronoun and sailor is its antecedent.]
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by Frank Edgar Farley and George Lyman Kittredge - The former alone can we cognize a priori, that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - Or Contingent, inward, antecedent, nearest.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - If nature has given us no such sentiment, there is not, naturally, nor antecedent to human conventions, any such thing as property.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - I will now break into the inner rooms, and rip up the antecedent immediate causes which are there to be found.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - Its existence too must be such, as to preclude the possibility of requiring a cause or antecedent without an absurdity.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
