Anaforische

Anaforische, or anaphoric, reference is a linguistic relation in which a word or expression derives its interpretation from another element located earlier in the discourse. The dependent element is called the anaphor, and the earlier element it refers to is the antecedent. This relation helps create cohesion by linking different parts of a text or conversation without repeating information.

Common instances of anaphora are pronominal forms such as he, she, they, and it, as well as definite descriptions like the car when the pronoun it refers back to that noun. Example: “Sophie baked cookies. They were delicious.” Here, “they” is an anaphor referring to “cookies.” Anaphora also occurs in languages that allow zero anaphora, where the antecedent is recovered from context or verb morphology without an overt pronoun.

The phenomenon is distinguished from cataphora, where the referent appears later in the sentence (for example, “If she calls, Mary will answer,” where “she” refers to “Mary”). Exophora refers to entities outside the text, such as pointing to an object in the surrounding environment with a demonstrative like “this table.”

In computational linguistics, anaphora resolution is the task of identifying the antecedent of each anaphor in a text, forming a core component of coreference resolution systems. The study of anaforische references spans semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis, and cross-linguistically the realization and requirements for resolving antecedents can vary, influencing how texts are interpreted and processed.