Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 162cataphorcataphoracataphora [Grk kataphorá ‘bringing down,downward motion’]Term coined by K.Bühler (1934) in analogy to anaphora indicating a linguistic elementwhich points to information immediately following the utterance. Such cataphoricelements of speech (deixis) include determiners, personal pronouns, possessivepronouns, and interrogative pronouns in questions, e.g. He who in He who laughs lastlaughs longest.ReferencesBühler, K. 1934. Sprachtheorie. Jena. (2nd edn Stuttgart, 1965.)Halliday, M.A.K. and R.Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London.Reinhart, T. 1983. Anaphora and semantic interpretation. London. (Rev. repr. 1984.)Wiese, B. 1983. Anaphora by pronouns. Linguistics 21. 373–417.catastrophe theory [Grk katastréphein ‘tooverturn’]General mathematical theory of planes in n-dimensional spaces. Singularities (i.e.‘catastrophes’) frequently arise for the descriptive functions in sections of such planes.With some imagination one can interpret such sections as dynamic processes. Wildgen(1982) tries to make this potentially useful for linguistics; so far, it has been applied tomorphology and semantics.ReferencesWildgen, W. 1982. Catastrophe theoretic semantics: an elaboration and application of RenéThom’s theory. Amsterdam.——1989. Catastrophe theory as a basic tool in theoretical linguistics. TL 14. 259–94.