Personal pronoun before noun? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

a. Before Sarah_i can board the bus, she_i needs to get some coins for the fare.

b. Before she_i can board the bus, Sarah_i needs to get some coins for the fare.

Pronouns can:

1. Refer to anything in the speaker's and listener's environment that they are both aware of (they can be exophoric).
2. Refer to something previously mentioned within the sentence or within the conversation.
3. Refer to something higher up in the clause structure (so a pronoun in a subordinate clause can refer to a thing or person mentioned in the main, matrix clause).

Sentence (a) is fine because she co-refers backwards with Sarah which appears earlier in the sentence.

Sentence (b) is fine because she appears in a subordinate clause and refers to Sarah which is in the main clause.

Both types of sentence are perfectly acceptable and are very common in all types of speech and writing. Notice, however, that if none of conditions (1-3) hold, then she will not be able to co-refer with another common noun in the sentence. So we cannot have she in a main clause trying to co-refer with a later Sarah in a subordinate clause.

c. *She_i needs to get some coins for the bus before Sarah_i can board the bus.

In sentence (c) she and Sarah cannot refer to the same person. This is because, firstly, she occurs before Sarah. Secondly, Sarah is subordinate, and she cannot refer to a noun in a lower clause. This sentence is not possibble.

Solution 2:

I find the two equally acceptable, regardless of whether "she" refers to the same person as "Sarah". And grammatically, they are both expected to be acceptable, since in the first, the potential antecedent "Sarah" precedes "she", and in the second, "Sarah" commands "she". "She" is commanded, because it is inside every clause that "Sarah" is inside:

[S1 Before [S2 she can board the bus ], Sarah needs to get some coins for the fare.]

So "she" is inside clauses S1 and S2, but "Sarah" is only inside clause S1.

The command relation was introduced by Ronald Langacker in 1969. It has led to much (not very productive) discussion since then.