In
linguistics,
anaphora is the use of an expression the interpretation of which depends upon another expression in context (its
antecedent or postcedent). In a narrower sense, anaphora is the use of an expression which depends specifically upon an antecedent expression, and thus is contrasted with
cataphora, which is the use of an expression which depends upon a postcedent expression. The anaphoric (referring) term is called an
anaphor. For example, in the sentence
Sally arrived, but nobody saw her, the
pronoun her is an anaphor, referring back to the antecedent
Sally. In the sentence
Before her arrival, nobody saw Sally, the pronoun
her refers forward to the postcedent
Sally, so
her is now a
cataphor (and an anaphor in the broader, but not the narrower, sense). Usually, an anaphoric expression is a
proform or some other kind of
deictic (contextually-dependent) expression. Both anaphora and cataphora are species of
endophora, referring to something mentioned elsewhere in a dialog or text.