Inlinguistics,cataphora (/kəˈtæfərə/; fromGreek,καταφορά,kataphora, "a downward motion" fromκατά,kata, "downwards" andφέρω,pherō, "I carry") is the use of an expression or word thatco-refers with a later, more specific expression in the discourse.^[1] The preceding expression, whose meaning is determined or specified by the later expression, may be called acataphor. Cataphora is a type ofanaphora, although the termsanaphora andanaphor are sometimes used in a stricter sense, denoting only cases where the order of the expressions is the reverse of that found in cataphora.

An example of cataphora in English is the following sentence:

• Whenhe arrived home,John went to sleep.

In this sentence, the pronounhe (the cataphor) appears earlier than the nounJohn (thepostcedent) that it refers to. This is the reverse of the more normal pattern, "strict" anaphora, where areferring expression such asJohn (in the example above) orthe soldier (in the example below) appears before any pronouns that reference it. Both cataphora and anaphora are types ofendophora.

Other examples of the same type of cataphora are:

• If you wantsome, here's someparmesan cheese.
• Afterhe had received his orders,the soldier left the barracks.
• If you wantthem, there arecookies in the kitchen.

Cataphora across sentences is often used for rhetorical effect. It can build suspense and provide a description. For example:

• He's the biggest slob I know.He's really stupid.He's so cruel.He's my boyfriend Nick.

The examples of cataphora described so far are strict cataphora, because the anaphor is an actualpronoun. Strict within-sentence cataphora is highly restricted in the sorts of structures it can appear within, generally restricted to a preceding subordinate clause. More generally, however, any fairly generalnoun phrase can be considered an anaphor when itco-refers with a more specific noun phrase (i.e. both refer to the same entity), and if the more general noun phrase comes first, it can be considered an example of cataphora. Non-strict cataphora of this sort can occur in many contexts, for example:

• Alittle girl,Jessica, was playing on the swings.

(The anaphora little girl co-refers withJessica.)

• Findingthe right gadget was a real hassle. I finally settled with adigital camera.

(The anaphorthe right gadget co-refers witha digital camera.)

Strict cross-sentence cataphora where the antecedent is an entire sentence is fairly common cross-linguistically:

• I should have knownit:The task is simply too difficult.
• Ich hättees wissen müssen:Die Aufgabe ist einfach zu schwer. (Same as previous sentence, in German.)

Cataphora of this sort is particularly common in formal contexts, using an anaphoric expression such asthis orthe following. Such expressions are often used in conjunction with a colon.

• This is what I believe: thatall men were created equal.
• After squaring both sides, we arrive atthe following:${\displaystyle x=y^3+2z-1}$.

• Exophora – Reference to something not in the immediate text
• Apposition – Grammatical construction wherein two adjacent elements identify each other

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