CATAPHORA

Question

Could you please let me know if the following sentences has cataphora or not:

1 - Until now considered a calm, safe country, Tunisia’s recent turbulence, a result of boiling frustrations over a growing unemployment crisis, reveals the years of simmering problems that bubbled below seemingly cool waters.

2 - Their goals are modest: a job, an income, perhaps a chance to get married, a family, normalcy, dignity

3 - Often referred to as a quasi-mafia, an oblique mention of "the Family" is enough to indicate which family you mean.

Please give me more examples about Catphora.
Many thanks.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

AnonymousCould you please let me know if the following sentences have cataphora or not

I would say they do. You can find a few more examples here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphora

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Hi

There are three basic ways of understanding or unfolding a sentence or story - anaphora, cataphora or exaphora

The first, anaphora, is the straightforward way - I introduce a subject and then tell you more about it

You'd like my brother - he tells such funny stories

However, it is possible to do this the other way around..

He was born in 1955 and carried a gun from the age of eight - my brother was a mean guy

Here, you read "He" and you don't know who I mean. But a second later it is clear when you see that it's my brother that I'm talking about. This is cataphora

Your first two examples are like that..

I see "country" and think "which country are you talking about" - then I see it's Tunisia

You tell me they have some goals that are modest - what do you mean? Ah - it is people who look forward to having a job and getting married and so on

And then there is exaphora. Here, the idea does not refer back in the sentence or forward in the sentence. You have to have outside knowledge..

My brother was shot the same year as Kennedy

Here it may not be explained further - you just have to know that US President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963

I would say your third example is exaphora. Unless I know more about your story - which country it is, for example - I'm not sure how to understand it

Hope this helps, Dave

CATAPHORA

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