I agree with Kath that none of those lines are troubling. [well, except the 'see them hitting' example, where the lack of clarification over 'them' may be a little galling, but the real issue is treating 'to hit' as though it could be intransitive. But I believe this is American sporting jargon of some sort?] [oh, and the first one is ambiguous as to who the certificate belongs to, but I don't think that's a related issue]
I'm not sure why the Chomsky example isn't troubling for you. How about if we make him the subject instead of the object? !He'd read all about me before Noam Chomsky ever met me - is that still not troubling for you? Because it is to me.
Now interestingly, if we change the clause structure, that becomes OK for me: Before he read about the frog, Noam Chomsky met me - fine. [added the frog because I don't like the repetition of 'me' here. Also matched the tenses to avoid that complication]]
Can we do the same thing with the object example? ?Before I read about him, I met Noam Chomsky - sort of. This feels like something I could say in certain contexts, but would feel uncertain about in writing. I think it's because of emphasis - I can make it work by emphasising the subordinate clause, but without that strong vocal emphasis it sounds like 'he' may be someone other than Chomsky.
So I guess there's at least two issues here - one about deranking and one about subjecthood or topicality. Both of these are often relevent to reference extraction, so that's not a great surprise.
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Looking at your examples, we've got: 1. not sure what to call this, but this sort of title/subtitle newspaperspeak can allow all sorts of fragments to be topicalised like that 2. deranked determiner to a full noun, followed by a full noun in the matrix clause 3. ostension 4. deranked subject pronoun followed by matrix subject noun (followed by deranked pronoun) 5. matrix pronoun, no noun 6. copula 7. interjected topic 8. matrix pronoun, no noun
We can immediately dismiss 5 and 8, since they don't have the phenomenon at all. Likewise, 3 falls under the general rules for ostension. 6 is obviously no problem, it's a copula (specifically we don't need to crossreference between clauses here). 7 is an interjected topic, which is always ungainly and frowned upon in writing, but very common in speech. Of these, the only relevent examples are the second and the Garcia Marquez, and they seem perfectly well-formed to me - for the GM, the pronoun refers to the subject/topic, and the full noon is the subject in the main clause. The second is different because we're dealing with a determiner, not an actual pronoun.
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Going back to the subject thing, let's try these [and specifically, in each case, 'he' must be Chomsky]: A: He ate lunch before Noam Chomsky fainted B: He ate lunch before I met Noam Chomsky C: The sheep bit him before Noam Chomsky fainted D: The sheep bit him before I met Noam Chomsky
And then: E: Before he ate lunch, Noam Chomsky fainted F: Before he ate lunch, I met Noam Chomsky G: Before the sheep bit him, Noam Chomsky fainted H: Before the sheep bit him, I met Noam Chomsky
Evidently D is OK for you. But what about the others?
For me, A, B, C and D are clearly wrong. E and G are clearly fine. F and H are questionable - I'd say them in certain contexts with certain intonations, but I might raise an eyebrow seeing them on paper and they don't feel quite 'right'. Particularly H - F isn't 'quite right' but is cetainly better.
So for me, for pure cataphor to work, the pronoun has to be in the main clause and the full noun it links to must be in the deranked clause. And I'm uneasy about linking to any non-topic/subject in the the main clause, particularly when the pronoun itself isn't in subject position either.
While we're at it, let's try a different sort of deranking: I: He asked me to remember Noam Chomsky J: I asked him to remember Noam Chomsky K: He asked me to let Noam Chomsky eat me L: I asked him to let Noam Chomsky eat me
Again, these are all illegal for me (or rather, they're legal only so long at the pronoun DOESN'T link to Chomsky).
_________________ Blog:
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
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