To my knowledge, personal pronouns and the noun they represent can be inter-swapped. So both these sentences are correct. (I may be wrong, I'm not sure.)
"Unless she arrives here early, Susan will be fired."
"Unless Susan arrives here early, she will be fired."
However in the case of possessive pronouns is such a rule/ understanding also the same? My question is, simply put, must the noun be in the main clause always and the possessive pronoun in the subordinate clause? Are both iterations correct or is one more popular/grammatical than the other?
"Due to his poor memory, Richard forgot about the appointment."
"Due to Richard's poor memory, he forgot about the appointment."
One proponent suggested to me that the noun must always be in the main clause, since the main clause can stand alone as a sentence. Is this true? Anaphora or cataphora?
Best Answer
There are no problems with the sentence "Due to his poor memory, Richard forgot about the appointment".
The other sentence, "Due to Richard's poor memory, he forgot about the appointment" contains a possessive antecedent (Richard's poor memory), which has offended some prescriptivists.
Wikipedia has a short entry on the possessive antecedent and why some object to it. The entire entry is reproduced below:
There is also a discussion of the topic by Professsor Pullum on Language Log, based on a controversy as to whether the following sentence from a question in a PSAT test contains a grammatical error or not:
You can read more about the issue by doing a search on PAP or Possessive Antecedent Proscription.