In the sentence 'Maria baked a cake. It was delicious.', the pronoun 'It' is an example of which type of reference?

• A. Cataphoric reference
• B. Exophoric reference
• C. Endophoric reference
• D. Intrusion

Answer: (C)

Understanding how pronouns connect to their antecedents in the discourse. In this pair of sentences, the pronoun It refers back to something already mentioned: the cake. Because the antecedent is within the same text and has been introduced earlier, this is endophoric reference (often aligned with anaphoric reference in many frameworks). It doesn’t point to something outside the text (that would be exophoric) and it isn’t pointing forward to something not yet mentioned (that would be cataphoric). Intrusion isn’t a standard reference type here. So the pronoun It is best understood as endophoric reference.