Which term best describes the reference in the sentence 'The car was new, and it has never been damaged,' where 'it' refers to 'car'?

• A. Anaphoric reference
• B. Cataphoric reference
• C. Exophoric reference
• D. Deictic reference

Answer: (A)

Anaphoric reference is when a pronoun points back to something mentioned earlier in the discourse. In this sentence, the pronoun “it” refers to “car,” which was stated before. That backward linkage is exactly what anaphora describes.

A cataphoric reference would be the opposite, with the pronoun pointing forward to something that appears later. Exophoric reference points to something outside the text or shared context, not to a word already mentioned. Deictic references rely on situational context like time or place (this/that here/now), which isn’t how the pronoun functions here.