Antecedent (grammar)

About: Antecedent (grammar) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1392 publications have been published within this topic receiving 41824 citations.

Entrepreneurial Intentions and Economic Crisis

Abstract: Economic crisis may inhibit the individual's intention to start a business. Yet, its study in entrepreneurship literature is overlooked. This observation does not come as a surprise, if one looks at how the role of environment has been slowly left out from the study of entrepreneurial intention. This article informs the current models of entrepreneurial intention by bringing back the role of environment and is a first step towards theorizing about the applicability of these predictive models under extremely adverse economic conditions. Using a fact-based approach and drawing upon a dataset of 618 graduates in Greece, the paper explores the role of perceived crisis both as an antecedent and a moderator in an extended model of entrepreneurial intention. Social support is introduced in the model as an additional determinant of entrepreneurial intention. Findings regarding the antecedent effects show that crisis affects all antecedents of intention, apart from attitude, while findings regarding the moderating effects show that crisis moderates only the desirability constructs - intention relationship and it does so in a rather unexpected way. Research and practical implications are discussed.

Constitution and model. The quantum theory of Bohr and imagining the atom

Abstract: The quantum theory of Bohr has roots in the theories of Rutherford and J. J. Thomson on the one hand, and that of Nicholson on the other. We note that Bohr neither presented the theories of Rutherford and Thomson faithfully, nor did he refer to the theory of Nicholson in its own terms. The contrasting attitudes towards these antecedent theories is telling and reveals the philosophical disposition of Bohr. We argue that Bohr intentionally avoided the concept of model as inappropriate for describing his proposed theory. Bohr had no problem in referring to the works of others as 'models', thus separating his theory from previous theories. He was interested in uncovering 'a little piece of reality'.

An Event Semantics Approach to Sluicing vs. VP Ellipsis

Abstract: This study proposes an account on contrasting grammaticality of sluicing and VP ellipsis based on davidsonian event semantics by arguing for a fundamental semantic difference between them. It is claimed that the elided event in sluicing is an old event, which is anaphorically referring back to the event denoted by the antecedent event, just like a pronoun, whereas the event of a VP ellipsis introduces a novel event. This can explain why sluicing usually occurs with an indefinite antecedent, whereas VPE cannot.

On Korean Children's Knowledge of Principle B

Abstract: Late emergence of Principle B relative to Principle A is widely observed in the L1 acquisition of Binding Principles. Chien and Wexler (1990) argued that the delayed acquisition of Principle B is attributed to the lack of pragmatic principles (called Principle P), not to the lack of Principle B. They took as evidence for their claim children’s better performance on binding interpretation of pronouns with a quantified antecedent than their performance on binding interpretation of pronouns with a referential antecedent. Following Chien and Wexler’s work, numerous studies replicated their experiments but the results of the studies were quite divergent. The present study attempts to readdress the issue of Principle B in child grammar by testing 49 Korean children’s performance (between the ages of 5 to 7) on the referential and quantificational binding interpretation for pronouns. We found the opposite pattern: children’s performance on referential reading for pronouns was more accurate than their performance on quantificational reading for pronouns. We consider Sorace and Serratrice (2009)’s Interface Vulnerability Hypothesis as possible explanation of the results.

Referentiality in noun phrases and relative pronouns

Abstract: This paper examines the use of who and which with human antecedents in non-restrictive relative clauses. Apart from the cases where the antecedent is a property NP, the contexts that require which are claimed to be those where the antecedent is a non-specifi c NP (Kuno 1970, Declerck 1991). However, the use of which is not limited to these cases. Moreover, there are cases where which is not allowed even though the antecedent is a non-specifi c NP. I will argue that in order to fully account for the choice between who and which, it is crucial to consider not only the referentiality and the specifi city of the antecedent NP but also the semantic function that the relative pronoun plays in the clause, specifi cally, whether it is a referential NP, a property NP, or an NP involving a variable.