cataphor
UK/ˈkatəfə/US/ˈkætəfɚ/
cataphor noun: semicoma.
Noun
cataphor (countable and uncountable, plural cataphors or cataphora)
- Semicoma.
- Somnolence marked by periods of partial consciousness.
- The use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer ahead to another word in a sentence.
- Yet, all psycholinguistic studies, syntax processing, logic based grammars, poetry parsing and even formal parser construction, indicate that resolving anaphor is much easier than cataphor; we therefore collect an additional code point for any cataphor.1990, Golumbic, Martin Charles, Advances in artificial intelligence : natural language and knowledge-based systems
- It was hypothesized that the cataphor this would signal that a concept is likely to be mentioned again in the following story and that therefore the this-cataphor results in a higher activation.2001, Text representation : linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects
Forms of cataphor
| plural | cataphors |
|---|---|
| plural | cataphora |
Origin of cataphor
From Latin cataphora (“a coma”), from Ancient Greek καταφορά (kataphorá, “a bringing down, a lethargic attack”).
Questions about cataphor
- What does cataphor mean?
- Cataphor means semicoma.
- What part of speech is cataphor?
- Cataphor is a noun.
- How do you pronounce cataphor?
- Cataphor is pronounced /ˈkatəfə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cataphor?
- The plural of cataphor is cataphors.
Words near cataphor in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cataphor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “cataphor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cataphor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.