ANAPHORA, CATAPHORA, AND ANTECEDENT

1.      Anaphora

Anaphora is typically said to be endophora that is to have an antecedent which is a segment of text. Anaphora is a process to introduce the real same entities that turned by antecedent (Yule, 1996:37). Therefore, anaphora is the referent of personal pronoun that has been introduced before. In language technical term, the second utterance or the next utterance is called anaphor, and then the first utterance is called antecedent. Anaphora is used to keep the first referent that has been introduced from several entities. Here, the speaker will use variation utterances.

For example:

“Martin, would you look at the sun above us. It looks like going down

quickly”.

The sun as the antecedent and it as an anaphor.

Halliday and Hassan (1976), in a lengthy discussion of textual cohesion in English, classify reference into two types: exophora and endophora. When we utter his shirt or your uncle, we refer to some entity in the real world: real-world reference is called exophoric reference. But we can also refer to the referents in the text items using linguistic means: reference in the text is called endophoric reference. Consider the following sentence:

(2.1) Danny doesn't like hamburger. He avoids eating it whenever possible

Danny and hamburger are two nouns with exophoric reference, while he and it have endophoric reference: they refer to Danny and hamburger in the context, and not directly to a real-world entity. Traditionally they are called pronouns. Endophoric reference can be classified into anaphora and cataphora depending on the position of the antecedent.

Observe the short passage below:

(2.2) In the film, a man and a woman were trying to wash a cat. The man was holding the cat while the woman poured water on it. He said something to her and they started laughing.

The pronouns (it, he, her, and they) in the passage are a subsequent reference to already mentioned referents, which are known as anaphoric reference or anaphora. Technically speaking, the subsequent reference is called anaphor and the initial or already introduced reference is known as antecedents. Quirk et. al. (1985) states that anaphoric reference is used where the uniqueness of reference of some phrase the X is supplied by information given earlier in the discourse. They further distinguish two kinds of anaphora: direct and indirect. Indirect anaphora, the referents have already occurred in the text, and thus can be identified directly, whereas in indirect anaphora the hearer identifies the referents indirectly from his knowledge by inferring what has been mentioned. Consider the following sentences:

(2.3) John bought a TV and tape recorder, but he returned the tape recorder.

(2.4) John bought a car, but when he drove it one of the wheels came off.

Sentence (2.3) exemplifies the use of direct anaphora where the referent the tape recorder can be identified directly, while sentence (2.4) contains the indirect anaphora where the noun car has been substituted by anaphor it. Similarly, Matthews (1997:18) defines anaphora as "the relation between a pronoun and another element, in the same or in an earlier sentence, that supplies its referents". Finally, Kreidler (1998) adds another type of anaphora, which he calls lexical anaphora. This anaphora is the restatement of a certain referring expression by means of repetition, synonym and superordinate as in (2.6) :

(2.5) There was a strange painting on the wall.the painting

(2.6) I wondered where the picture had come from this work of art

2.      Cataphora

Cataphora is the opposite of anaphora. Yule (1996:38) states that cataphora is the referent of the personal pronoun which has not introduced before.

For example:

“It looks like going down quickly, Martin. Just look at the sun above us”.

It as the cataphor and the sun as antecedent.

The notion of cataphora is less common in use than that of anaphora. Cataphora is the relation between an anaphoric expression and an antecedent that comes later (Matthews 1997:48). Thus cataphora refers to an entity that is mentioned later in the discourse. Consider this sentence:

(2.7) I turned to the corner and almost stepped on it. There was a large snake in the middle of the path.

The pronoun it (the cataphor) in the sentence can be interpreted as referring forward to a noun phrase a large snake, (the antecedent) and is said to have a cataphoric reference. Cataphora is also known as anticipatory anaphora or backward anaphora.

3. Antecedent

  An antecedent is a word, phrase, or clause referred to endophorically by another expression which is preceded or follows it (Crystal. 1985:17).

For example :

In the following construction, the boy is the antecedent of who :

“The boy who pitched the game is worn out.”

In the following construction, a towel is the antecedent of one :

“If you need one, there’s a towel in the top drawer.”

References

Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Crystal, David. 1985. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 2nd edition. New York: Basil

Blackwell.

Arifin, E. Z., dkk. 2015. Wacana Transaksional dan Interaksional dalam Bahasa Indonesia.

Jakarta: Pustaka Mandiri.