Antecedent

From TechWriter Wiki

The antecedent in a sentence is the word or phrase to which another word in the sentence refers. Most commonly, the term 'antecedent' is used when referring to the noun to which a relative pronoun refers.

Examples:
In the following examples, the antecedent is underlined, and the relative pronoun is shown in italics.

• The author has submitted his draft for review.
• Neither Sales Managers nor Territory Managers can approve their own requests.