This paper explores discourse factors implied in the event of intra/inter-sentential cataphora. Using natural language corpus analysis, it assesses two cognitive theories that try to account for cataphora: clausal backgrounding (Harris and Bates, 2002) and Accessibility Theory (Ariel, 1990). The first part explores the occurrence of cataphoric he, she, it and they in a corpus commented on by nucleus-satellite labels ( Mann and Thompson, 1988), which are conceived as discourse correlates of the foreground-background contrast. It is demonstrated that cataphora cannot be limited to backgrounded text parts, and that backgrounding doesn’t hold as clarification at discourse level. The second part explores a cognitively associated phenomenon: accessibility and its impact on cataphora. It is shown that in various conditions accessibility parameters like Givenness, Distance and Unity do not evidence a plain impact (in particular when a cataphora occurrence and its antecedent are in distinct sentences), whereas Saliency and (non)Competition do play a role in cataphora occurrence (both intra- and inter-sententially).