Can a pronoun refer to a clause?

[saurabhguptausa]

Can a pronoun refer to a clause? Or in other words, can it refer to any other sentence fragment other than a noun?

Dental caries and gingivitis can be exacerbated not only by what patients eat but also by when they eat it.

In this sentence what does 'IT' refer to? Is it referring to a clause 'what patients eat'? Is it possible in real GMAT to have such constructions? So far my understanding was that a pronoun need a clear antecedent, which should be a noun.

This sentence is copied from 1000SC and the questions number is 238. This is a general query about the pronoun, not really that I am discussing the SC question itself. I hope posting such queries about any sentences from 1000sc is not a violation of forum rules.

[tim]

technically the "it" refers back to the "what", so it's okay. of course, you need to expand to "what patients eat" to understand what the "what" is about, but the connection is between "it" and "what"..

[ilyana777]

In that particular sentence pronoun doesn't refer to a clause, but what about things in general? Can pronoun "it" refer to a clause?

I think that the GMAT doesn't accept it, but I want confirmation.

Not until 1974 was she made a nationally recognized figure, as it was televised nationwise.

Is "it" 100% mistake in this sentence? I think in normal English "it" can refer to a clause (in this situation, to the process of her becoming a nationally recognized figure), but what about the GMAT?

[RonPurewal]

That would not be acceptable in formal written English.
(If that kind of thing were acceptable, then pronouns would be allowed to stand for literally anything in the world.)

[Raquelsc85]

Is this sentence correct?

Most people now take for granted that colleges and universities admit students nationally based on academic merit, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I have the impression that the pronoun IT refers to the whole sentence... But this sentence is presented in the manhattan explanation for a sentence correction question in the CAT EXAMs.

[RonPurewal]

Is this sentence correct?

Most people now take for granted that colleges and universities admit students nationally based on academic merit, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I have the impression that the pronoun IT refers to the whole sentence... But this sentence is presented in the manhattan explanation for a sentence correction question in the CAT EXAMs.

Don't try to apply the standards of SC to answer explanations (or other auxiliary text).

For a sentence to meet the standards of SC, it must be written very, very carefully, and then must undergo a further process of editing before it can "go live" as a question. The process of creating one SC sentence, along with five answer choices, often takes over an hour.
Obviously we can't apply the same standards to explanatory text. If we did, it'd take an entire business day to write the explanations for 2-3 problems.

The same is true for OG explanations (and verbal problems other than SC), by the way. The OG explanations very often use informal grammatical constructions that wouldn't be correct in an SC sentence.

[ashleyj985]

A SC sentence goes like this:
"It is now universally accepted that William Shakespeare was a real, historical person...... ".
Here what does the pronoun 'it' refer to?
I think it refers to the clause - william shakespeare was a real, historical person.
But pronouns are not supposed to refer to any clauses.

May please help me in understanding this.
Also, correct me if im wrong.

[RonPurewal]

this is treated here:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... tml#p49622

basically, this construction is one of a very small number of exceptions, in which "it" doesn't stand for anything at all.

do note that the exceptions should have the EXACT constructions described in that post!

[aflaamM589]

technically the "it" refers back to the "what", so it's okay. of course, you need to expand to "what patients eat" to understand what the "what" is about, but the connection is between "it" and "what"..

Can two different pronouns have same antecedents?

[RonPurewal]

"what xxxxx" doesn't have an antecedent.

[aflaamM589]

so does it means it also not have an antecedent? confused.
: (

[RonPurewal]

ah, i just looked farther up the thread and realized this problem is from "1000SC". that source is banned here for a reason—the problems have serious issues, and don't follow the same principles of formal english that GMAT SC problems follow.

ignore this problem, as well as ALL problems from "1000SC".