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Cataphoric it and backgrounding from the point of view of coherence relations.
In (1a) the pronoun cannot be coreferential with the subsequent noun, but in (1b) it can. (1) a. *He finished breakfast before John went to school. (from Carden & Dieterich 1980, cited in Harris & Bates 2002) b. After he finished breakfast, John went to school (he = John) Earlier accounts have suggested that pronouns cannot precede their referents when the pronoun is the subject of the clause (1a), but may when the pronoun appears in a syntactically subordinate clause (1b). Many cases, such as (1) are part of the same sentence. Other cases, however, involve reference across sentences. (2) And I just remember that movie was, had a lot of hype about being really scary and suspenseful and it's nothing like these movies that are out today like Scream and, what is it? Nightmare on Elm Street whatever it is, where they're actual horror movies. [OANC]1 2 Research questions We address two related questions. First of all, we would like to know why in some cases a pronoun is allowed to refer ahead to a subsequent noun, as in (1b). Secondly, we are interested in the discourse factors involved in inter‐sentential cataphora.