A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

68 cataphora
used with an objective and instrumental case (e.g. The key opened the door),
or with an additional agent (e.g. The man opened the door with a key). Later,
other cases were suggested (source, goal, counter-agent), some cases were
reinterpreted and relabelled (see experiencer, result), and certain cases came
to be given special study, it being claimed that they were more fundamental
(location and direction, in particular). In a locative or localist case theory, for
example, structures such as there is a table, the table has legs, the table’s legs,
and many more, could each be analysed as having an underlying locational
feature. The problems in formalizing this conception of linguistic structure have
remained very great, and case grammar came to attract somewhat less interest in
the mid-1970s; but it has proved to be influential on the terminology and
classification of several later theories, especially the theory of thematic roles.
See also frame, theme.
cataphora (n.) A term used by some grammarians for the process or result of
a linguistic unit referring forward to another unit. Cataphoric reference is
one way of marking the identity between what is being expressed and what is
about to be expressed: for example, I said this/the following . . . , where the
meaning of this and the following must be specified in the subsequent context.
Here is the 9 o’clock news shows the cataphoric function of here. Cataphoric
words (or ‘substitutes’) are usually contrasted with anaphoric words (which
refer backwards), and sometimes with exophoric words (which refer directly
to the extralinguistic situation).
cataphoric (adj.)
see cataphora
categorial grammar
see category
categorical perception A term used in phonetics and psycholinguistics to
refer to a class of discontinuities in the labelling and discrimination of items
along acoustic phonetic continua. Subjects typically perceive differences in
stimuli between those items that are labelled as belonging to different categories;
but increasing the sensitivity of the measures allows some awareness of differences
within the same category.
categorization (n.)
see category
category (n.) A general term used in linguistics at varying levels of abstraction.
At its most general level, categorization refers to the whole process of
organizing human experience into general concepts with their associated linguistic
labels; the linguistic study of this process (in semantics) overlaps with
that of philosophers and psychologists. In the field of grammar, categorization
refers to the establishment of a set of classificatory units or properties used
in the description of language, which have the same basic distribution, and
which occur as a structural unit throughout the language. In the course of
language change, there may be alterations in the category status of a unit
(recategorization). The term category in some approaches refers to the classes
themselves, e.g. noun, verb, subject, predicate, noun phrase, verb phrase
(any associated abbreviations being referred to as category symbols). More