100 Percent of pronoun.

[kenryuakuma]

In one of my grammar books, it is said that some pronouns can 100% take the place of nouns, but some others are used for only the subsitution for names, not for content.

The author is so stupid, and this confuses me.

Here is the sentence. The man who gives love to the children of others is greater than the man who gives it only to his own children.
#it is no doubt that the antecedent of it is LOVE. However, is the love of the man who gives his love to the children of others and the man who gives love only to his own children the same? Is love=it in this sentence. NO, so IT in this sentence can only be used in place of the name of LOVE and not the content of LOVE.

Here is another sentence.
The tail of the rabbit is not so long as that of a rat. The tail of the rabbit and the rat are both called tail, but is that=tail? NO. So we can only say that THAT is only used in place of names and not in place of content.
THAT=the noun(100% pronominal or partially pronominal; a pronoun and its referent do not have to be co-referential)

All the stupid things above are extracted from one of my grammar books. And all these are written by the author who wrote this grammar book.

#my question is why IT or THAT cannot 100% take the place of noun and some sort of things like IT or THAT can only be used in place of nouns and not contents...this really confuses me.

[Pete]

In one of my grammar books, it is said that some pronouns can 100% take the place of nouns, but some others are used for only the subsitution for names, not for content.

The author is so stupid, and this confuses me.

Here is the sentence. The man who gives love to the children of others is greater than the man who gives it only to his own children.
#it is no doubt that the antecedent of it is LOVE. However, is the love of the man who gives his love to the children of others and the man who gives love only to his own children the same? Is love=it in this sentence. NO, so IT in this sentence can only be used in place of the name of LOVE and not the content of LOVE.

Here is another sentence.
The tail of the rabbit is not so long as that of a rat. The tail of the rabbit and the rat are both called tail, but is that=tail? NO. So we can only say that THAT is only used in place of names and not in place of content.
THAT=the noun(100% pronominal or partially pronominal; a pronoun and its referent do not have to be co-referential)

All the stupid things above are extracted from one of my grammar books. And all these are written by the author who wrote this grammar book.

#my question is why IT or THAT cannot 100% take the place of noun and some sort of things like IT or THAT can only be used in place of nouns and not contents...this really confuses me.
Sorry for not replying the first time. I had never thought about this issue; interesting. The words "it" and "that" seem to be able to stand for either the abstract word (name or noun) or for the thing the word referred to earlier. You showed their uses standing for the word; I don't have to repeat your examples.

However, "it" and "that" can also stand for the thing that its antecedent refers to:
- I saw a performance of "King Lear" last night. It/That was the best one I had ever seen. [Here, "it" or "that" refers to the specific performance that was mentioned. Later in the sentence "one" refers to the word "performance", not to the performance that was mentioned earlier.]

It seems to me that if a specific person has been mentioned earlier, pronouns like "he" or "she" generally refer to that individual and are not simply substitutes for a word like "man", "woman", or "person".

I don't think I see any sort or special rule here, just something to watch out for as you try to understand a sentence.

[kenryuakuma]

Thanks a lot Pete... But there is something unsolved in my question.

The author wrote:
#In this sentence, THAT(Demonstrative pronoun)cannot 100% take place of, substitute for or stand for the meaning of the tail.
The tail of the rat is not as long as (THAT) of the rabbit. Here THAT isn't = TAIL. And here THAT is used only for the substitution for WORD not the MEANING.

#In this sentence, IT isn't 100% = LOVE. And IT here basically only substitute for the WORD of LOVE, and NOT the MEANING of LOVE. Here is the sentence:
The man who gives LOVE to the children of others is greater than the man who gives IT only to his own children.

I just wonder why IT or THAT isn't 100%= THE ANTECEDENT.

Besides, what does this group of words mean?
#(100% pronominal or partially pronominal; a pronoun and its referent do not have to be co-referential)

[Pete]

Thanks a lot Pete... But there is something unsolved in my question.

The author wrote:
#In this sentence, THAT(Demonstrative pronoun)cannot 100% take place of, substitute for or stand for the meaning of the tail.
The tail of the rat is not as long as (THAT) of the rabbit. Here THAT isn't = TAIL. And here THAT is used only for the substitution for WORD not the MEANING.

#In this sentence, IT isn't 100% = LOVE. And IT here basically only substitute for the WORD of LOVE, and NOT the MEANING of LOVE. Here is the sentence:
The man who gives LOVE to the children of others is greater than the man who gives IT only to his own children.

I just wonder why IT or THAT isn't 100%= THE ANTECEDENT.

Besides, what does this group of words mean?
#(100% pronominal or partially pronominal; a pronoun and its referent do not have to be co-referential)
Let's compare the use of the pronoun "that" in 2 sentences: the one I'll give next, and then the example you gave.

A: Look at the tail of the rat in the cage; that is the longest one I've ever seen.

B: The tail of the rat is not as long as that of the rabbit.

In sentence A, the word "that" stands for "the tail of the rat in the cage". Substitute it, and you get,
A2: Look at the tail of the rat in the cage; <u>the tail of the rat in the cage</u> is the longest one I have ever seen.
This is what the sentence is supposed to mean. The author of your grammar book calls this "100% of the antecedent"; that means that the pronoun stands for the complete antecedent. Note that when you see the phrase "the tail of the rat in the cage", you get an image of a specific tail. When you see "that" in the next clause, you get the identical image. The word "that" stands for a specific tail in the real world.

In sentence B, the complete noun phrase (the antecedent) is "The tail of the rat". Note that in the next clause, the word "that" does not stand for the whole antecedent. If you substitute the complete antecedent for the word "that", you get: "
B2: The tail of the rat is longer than <u>the tail of the rat</u> of the rabbit.
That does not make sense! What does make sense is to substitute just part of the antecedent:
B3: The tail of the rat is longer than <u>the tail</u> of the rabbit.
This is what the author means by substituting "less than 100% of the antecedent. Also note, that in the first clause, "the tail" refers to something that is long and skinny. In the second clause, the word "that" (or the substituted word, "the tail", refers to something that is short and fluffy. That is why the author says that in sentence B, the antecedent is just the word ("tail"), not the thing that the word refers to.

I don't know whether this is any clearer or not.

Looking at the sentence the author gave,
- 100% pronominal or partially pronominal; a pronoun and its referent do not have to be co-referential

The first part just lists his terms for this aspect of grammar; they mean, "acting 100% as a pronoun" and "acting partially as a pronoun".
The second part speaks of a pronoun and its referent (= antecedent; the word it stands for). When the author says that these do not have to be co-referential, he simply means that these 2 items ("tail" and "that" in sentence B) do not have to refer to the same thing in the real world (remember, the skinny rat's tail and the fluffy rabbit's tail.)

The reason he takes such pain to point this out is that in my sentence A (and in the majority of sentences with pronouns), the "tail" in the first part is precisely the same tail as the one the pronoun "that" refers to in the second part. The author knows that this is the way things usually work, but in this advanced lesson, he is showing you that there can be exceptions.

I hope this helps. It is all fairly abstract.

[kenryuakuma]

Thank you so much for eliminating my doubt towards this aspect of pronoun Pete...It is a great help. Anyway, there are a lot more that I wanna discuss with you. See you the next time.