Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
anaphora [Grk anaphor-á ‘carrying back; reference’] (also anaphoric element, coreference, pro-form)
1 Linguistic element which refers back to another linguistic element (
antecedent) in the coreferential relationship, i.e. the reference of an anaphora can only be ascertained by interpreting its antecedent (see Wasow 1979; Thrane 1980). In this sense, anaphora is contrasted with cataphora, where the words refer forward. However, the term ‘anaphora’ may also be found subsuming both forward and backward reference. If the anaphoric element has the same reference as the antecedent, it is termed coreferent. The occurrence of anaphoras is considered to be a characteristic property of texts; it produces textual coherence ( textuality; cf. text linguistics). The most common anaphoric elements are pronouns (Philip read a novel. He liked it a lot); in addition, certain forms of ellipsis can be evaluated as cases of anaphora (Philip [bought a book], Caroline [0] too). In Government and Binding theory, the traditional term anaphora takes a more restrictive sense, referring only to reflexive and reciprocal pronouns (They hit themselves/each other). Cf. binding theory.
References
Aoun, J. 1985. A grammar of anaphora. Cambridge, MA.
Bosch, P. 1983. Agreement and anaphora. London.
Fiengo, R. and R.May. 1994. Indices and identity. Cambridge, MA.
Fox, B.A. 1993. Discourse structure and anaphora. Cambridge.
Graeme, H. 1981. Anaphora in natural language understanding: a survey. New York.
Hintikka, J. and J.Kulas. 1987. Anaphora and definite descriptions. Dordrecht.
Huang, Y. 1994.
The syntax and pragmatics of anaphora: a study with special reference to Chinese. Cambridge.
Koster, H. and E.Reuland (eds) 1991. Long-distance anaphora. Cambridge.
Kreimann, J. and A.E.Ojeda (eds) 1980. Pronouns and anaphora. Chicago, IL.
Kuno, S. 1987. Functional syntax: anaphora, discourse and empathy. Chicago, IL.
Reinhart, T. 1983. Anaphora and semantic interpretation. Chicago, IL. (Rev. repr. London, 1984.)
Sternefeld, W. 1993. Anaphoric reference. In J. Jacobs et al. (eds), Syntax: an international handbook of contemporary research. Berlin and New York. 940–65.
Thrane, T. 1980. Referential—semantic analysis. Cambridge.
Wasow, T. 1979. Anaphora in generative grammar. Ghent.
Weber, B.L. 1979. A formal approach to discourse anaphora. New York.
Westergaard, M.R. 1986. Definite NP anaphora. Oslo.
Wiese, B. 1983. Anaphora by pronouns. Linguistics 21.373–417.
binding theory, deictic expression, deixis, discourse representation theory, Government and Binding theory, personal pronoun, reflexive pronoun, text linguistics, trace theory
2 Stylistic device of ancient rhetoric which serves to increase rhetorical force by repeating words or syntactic structures at the beginning of two consecutive sentences or verses ( epiphora).
References
figure of speech
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