In a short review of the sequel to “The Graduate”, we find this in today’s Boston Globe:
Forty years have passed since Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson were last seen breathless on the back seat of a bus, staring at a future that suddenly seemed as dense and inscrutable as a new planet. The indelible scene, of course, is from the movie “The Graduate,” which consigned Charles Webb, on whose novel it was based, to the bizarre fate of being the unknown author of his most famous work.
“the unknown author of his most famous work” — Discuss.
The pronoun “his” in “the unknown author of his most famous work” could be bound by either the preceding proper name “Charles Webb” or the noun “(unknown) author”. The former binding isn’t really i-within-i, whereas the latter binding is. The two readings are different, thanks to the intensionality of “bizarre fate”: is it bizarre for someone_i to be the unknown author of Charles Webb’s most famous work (de re), or is it bizarre for someone_i to be the unknown author of his_i most famous work (de dicto)? Given that the de-re reading is plausible, this particular sentence doesn’t really provide evidence that i-within-i can be ok.
February 10th, 2008, at 9:07 pm #The de re reading may be plausible, but nonetheless it doesn’t seem right. What is bizarre is being an unknown author of your most famous work (completely de dicto), not just being an unknown author of x (completely de re), or being the unknown author of x’s most famous work (de re pronoun, de dicto description).
Yet, I do think it’s correct of ccshan to say that the his of “his most famous work” is anaphoric to the earlier mention of Charles Webb, and not to “unknown author”. Note that if there is no prior antecedent, then the phrase doesn’t work:
??The unknown author of his most famous work was at the party yesterday.
Agreeing with ccshan, I would say that the problem here is that there is no antecedent for “his”.
What about the following alternative?
…bizarre fate of being [x=his most famous work, (unknown author of x)]
This way, “his most famous work” is still in the scope of bizarre. But, it’s not in the scope of unknown. Is that a problem?
February 12th, 2008, at 10:07 am #