cataphor

English

Etymology

From Latin cataphora (“a coma”), from Ancient Greek καταφορά (kataphorá, “a bringing down, a lethargic attack”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkatəfə/, /-ˌfɔː/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkætəfɚ/, /-ˌfɔɹ/

Noun

cataphor (countable and uncountable, plural cataphors or cataphora)

1. (medicine) Semicoma.
2. (medicine) Somnolence marked by periods of partial consciousness.
3. (linguistics) The use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer ahead to another word in a sentence.
   • 1990, Golumbic, Martin Charles, Advances in artificial intelligence : natural language and knowledge-based systems‎^[1]:

     Yet, all psycholinguistic studies, syntax processing, logic based grammars, poetry parsing and even formal parser construction, indicate that resolving anaphor is much easier than cataphor; we therefore collect an additional code point for any cataphor.

   • 2001, Text representation : linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects‎^[2]:

     It was hypothesized that the cataphor this would signal that a concept is likely to be mentioned again in the following story and that therefore the this-cataphor results in a higher activation.

   • 2015, Anaphora Resolution and Text Retrieval - A Linguistic Analysis of Hypertexts‎^[3]:

     Here, the cataphor she refers to Susan. It is quite common to use the term “antecedent” also for an expression to which a cataphor refers.