Introducing English Linguistics

men and women
, and unfailingly encouraged them to proceed
(BNC AL8 119)
Reference back to an antecedent noun phrase is known as anaphoric ref-
erence
. Less common is cataphoric reference: reference that points for-
ward in a text. In the above excerpt, the pronoun she in Because she lacked
academic qualifications, Miss Green ... not only refers back to the initial men-
tion of Sophie Green but anticipates a repetition of this individual in the
noun phrase Miss Green. Cataphoric reference is mainly restricted to occur-
ring in a subordinate clause beginning a sentence that is followed by a
main clause:
Although he was tired, the man tried to stay awake.
When they were young, the students were best friends.
In other syntactic environments, a pronoun preceding a noun will not be
interpreted as co-referential with the noun. In the example below, he is 
co-referential with the man because the reference is anaphoric: