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Prolepsis & Attraction

Posted: January 3rd, 2016, 7:49 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Having run across examples of Prolepsis in Sophocles, and read about it in Guy Cooper it seems that it has a connection with Attraction. ATR only devotes a small paragraph to Prolepsis but spends pages on Attraction. Cooper blends the two treatments and uses Attraction in different contexts with different meanings. What a student might find helpful is a syntax tree diagram (generative grammar style) of what is happening with Prolepsis and Attraction. Prolepsis involves movement of the subject/object from a subordinate clause to the main clause, leaving it to be supplied by inference in the subordinate clause. Attraction in most common usage has to do with agreement case|number|gender between antecedent and ...