Przenonyms

Przenonyms are a proposed class of pronominal markers that encode referential relocation within discourse, combining deictic orientation with anaphoric linkage. They signal how a referent relates to the current discourse frame—the speaker, the listener, and prior mentions—beyond what standard pronouns convey.

Morphology and syntax: Przenonyms may be clitics attached to verbs or nouns, or independent particles. In some languages they fuse with nouns as bound markers that indicate a referent already introduced in the discourse; in others they appear as separate pronouns that accompany a main pronoun. They can carry features of person, number, discourse distance (proximal vs distal), and discourse role (topic, focus, or alignment with the main predicate).

Semantics and use: Przenonyms encode information beyond ordinary pronouns, such as referential salience, perspective, and movement of a referent within the discourse structure. They interact with demonstratives, coreferential devices, and evidentials, and may mark whether a referent remains in focus across clauses or is shifted to a background context. Their use helps maintain coherence in longer discourse and can convey subtle stance or commitment by the speaker.

Cross-linguistic distribution and research: Przenonyms are documented in a limited number of language families and are an emerging area of morphosyntactic typology and discourse linguistics. Researchers compare them with related devices such as demonstratives, topic markers, and anaphoric pronouns. In computational linguistics, modeling przenomics adds challenges for coreference resolution and discourse parsing, requiring systems to track discourse centers and attentional focus.

Example: In a hypothetical language Solari, the przenonym ni marks that the referent has been previously introduced and remains the discourse focal point; a sentence might be Mara ni came, meaning “Mara came (the previously discussed person).”