Referensiell

Referensiell is an adjective used in linguistics to describe expressions whose primary function is to refer to specific entities or objects in the world or in discourse. The phenomenon is commonly referred to as referentiality, the relation between linguistic form and its referent.

Referential expressions include proper names (for example, Albert), definite noun phrases (the president), and certain pronouns and indexicals when their referents are identifiable in context. By contrast, non-referential expressions convey mood, evaluative stance, or general content without pointing to a particular entity, such as exclamations or purely descriptive adjectives.

In semantic theory, referential analyses treat the denotation of an expression as the object it designates. The understanding of reference interacts with deixis (context-dependent words like this/that), anaphora (pronouns that depend on prior mention), and discourse context, since the identity of a referent can shift with context and world knowledge.

The term is used across linguistics, philosophy of language, and computational linguistics to discuss how language anchors meaning to the world. It informs debates between referential or descriptivist accounts of meaning and guides applications in natural language processing that track referents in texts and dialogues.