A polemic is made for frame semantics and the linguistic phenomenon of anaphoric reference without noun phrase (NP) antecedent is examined within this frame. Non-syntactic anaphora is that which does not point out into the real world but rather points back into the discourse in a frame which has been built up between the speaker and hearer in a discourse. (For example, "How do you like 'that'?""That" is the anaphor whose meaning and grammatical behavior are interpretable only with respect to an antecedent.) Such anaphora, the situations in which it appears, and its various types of non-syntactic references, is sketched in a rough typology. Three plausibility arguments for the legitimacy of non-syntactic antecedents are presented. Non-syntactic anaphora is more common in speech than in writing. Whereas the total communication situation provides the referent in speech, this must be syntactically expressed in writing. The several properties of the use of "it,""this," and "that" are presented in detail. The primary criteria distinguishing the use of each are: (1) they way the speaker feels himself to be associated with the concept being referred to; (2) whether the anaphora themselves are antecedents for "it"; and (3) speaker changes within the discourse. The proposal that all anaphora is non-syntactic is accompanied by objections to this hypothesis. (PMJ)