Topics: Linguistics
(not to be confused with Anaphora (Rhetoric))
In linguistics. anaphora is the use of an expression that depends upon an antecedent expression to be interpretated.
The term that refers to the antecedent is called the anaphor.
For instance, in the sentence ”Dan arrived, but nobody saw him”, the pronoun him is an anaphor refers to the antecedent Dan.
Compare cataphora, which is the use of an expression that depends upon a postcedent. Both anaphora and cataphora are instances of endophora.