Thursday, August 04, 2005

Total Lack of Attention to Pronoun Antecedents

From yesterday's Best of the Web:
According to this analysis, Begala apparently was using the pronoun they to refer to multiple antecedents, and thus appeared to be conflating Republicans and terrorists in this quote:
They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted--that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit.
In this interpretation, the first three theys refer to terrorists, the fourth through sixth to Republicans, and the seventh to Begala's children.


Yeah...I never would have gotten away with something like that in college...or High School for that matter.