Contextreferring

Contextreferring is a term used in linguistics to describe expressions whose interpretation relies on information outside the utterance itself. Such expressions anchor reference to features of the surrounding discourse or the physical context in which a sentence is spoken or written.

The scope of contextreferring includes deictic expressions such as pronouns and demonstratives, deictic adverbs (now, then, here, there), and certain forms of anaphora and spatiotemporal locators. Their meaning cannot be fixed by syntax alone and varies with speakers’ shared context, the situation of utterance, and the participants in the discourse.

Interpretation relies on a context model in which referents are indexed or linked to discourse participants, objects in the discourse, times, and places. Listeners or readers infer intended meaning and resolve ambiguity using common ground, speaker perspective, and situational cues. Contextreferring therefore involves both linguistic structure and pragmatics.

Examples illustrate the concept: in a conversation, “This is tasty” refers to an item currently visible or salient; “She arrived late” depends on prior discourse to identify who “she” is; “Now” anchors to the present moment of the utterance. The precise reference can shift with context, even when the surface form is identical.

Relation and applications: Contextreferring overlaps with deixis and anaphora and is a central concern in discourse analysis and natural language processing. Challenges include cross-linguistic variation in how context is encoded, ambiguity when contextual information is incomplete, and modeling shared knowledge in computational systems. See also deixis, anaphora, reference, pragmatics.