Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
100
Linguists identify three main types of the co-referential devices: a) looking back-
ward, i.e. anaphoric reference, b) looking forward, i.e. cataphoric reference and c) looking 
outward, i.e. exophoric reference.
Anaphoric reference is the most common type of reference, used subconsciously in 
everyday conversation and writing. It occurs when the writer refers back to someone or 
something, that has been previously identified, in order to avoid repetition and be more 
compact (in Greek 
“anapherein”
meant “
to carry back”, “refer”
). It is known that human 
mind is rather limited in its capacity to store surface materials long enough to work on 
them. Anaphoric use of pronouns shorten and simplify the surface text without any diffi-
culties for the reader. For instance:
“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. 
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.”
In this well-known children’s rhyme the pronoun 
she
makes it unnecessary to 
keep saying “the old woman who lived in a shoe”, “the old woman”, or even “the woman”.
Usually, items such as 
he/him, she/her 
or
they/them 
can be decoded without major 
difficulty, whereas other items such as 
it,
this
and 
that
may be more troublesome because 
of their ability to refer to longer stretches of text. Let’s borrow an example from Halliday 
and Hasan: 
“It rained day and night for two weeks. The basement flooded and every-
thing was under water. 
It
spoilt all our calculations.”
Here the pronoun
it
seems to mean “the events of two weeks”, or “the fact that it rained 
and flooded”, that is, the situation as a whole rather than one specified entity in that situa-
tion. Anaphora is the most common directionality for co-reference, since the identity of 
the conceptual content being kept current is made plain in advance.
The second type of co-referential devices is the Cataphoric reference which is the 
reverse of anaphoric reference and is relatively straightforward. It occurs when the reader 
is introduced to someone or something as an abstract entity until it is identified by a co-
referring expression later. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 55) define cataphora as “the use of 
the pro-form before the co-referring expression.” It creates a temporarily empty position 

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
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