anaphora a device of reference or cross-reference in which a term (called an anaphor), typically a pronoun, has its semantic properties determined by a term or noun phrase (called the anaphor’s antecedent) that occurs earlier. Sometimes the antecedent is a proper name or other independently referring expression, as in ‘Jill went up the hill and then she came down again’. In such cases, the anaphor refers to the same object as its antecedent. In other cases, the anaphor seems to function as a variable bound by an antecedent quantifier, as in ‘If any miner bought a donkey, he is penniless’. But anaphora is puzzling because not every example falls neatly into one of these two groups. Thus, in ‘John owns some sheep and Harry vaccinates them’ (an example due to Gareth Evans) the anaphor is arguably not bound by its antecedent ‘some sheep’. And in ‘Every miner who owns a donkey beats it’ (a famous type of case discovered by Geach), the anaphor is arguably neither bound by ‘a donkey’ nor a uniquely referring expression. See also QUANTIFICATION, THE- ORY OF DESCRIPTION. M.M.