pro·form or pro-form (pr  fôrm )n. An item in a sentence, typically a pronoun, verb, or adverb, that substitutes for a constituent phrase or clause, as the words he and so in the sentence He said so, with the pronoun he replacing a noun phrase such as the president and the adverb so replacing a clause such as that he would leave today. |
pro-form
n
(Linguistics / Grammar) a word having grammatical function but assuming the meaning of an antecedent word or phrase for which it substitutes the word ``does'' is a pro-form for ``understands Greek'' in ``I can't understand Greek but he does''
Translations
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