Referentiemoement

Referentiemoement is a theoretical concept in linguistics and cognitive science that describes the dynamic process by which referents are maintained, shifted, or reanchored across segments of discourse and corresponding mental representations. The term is used to discuss how listeners and readers track entities through time, perspective changes, and narrative structure, even when explicit expressions of reference vary.

The concept emphasizes three core ideas. First, referents can persist beyond a single sentence, requiring ongoing alignment between discourse structure and memory. Second, the linguistic form used to refer to an entity may change—pronouns, proper names, or definite noun phrases—without losing continuity of reference. Third, shifts in perspective, narrator, or point of view can realign referential anchors, prompting reactivation of different entities as the discourse unfolds.

Referentiemoement relates to, but extends, established notions such as anaphora, coreference, and deixis. It sits alongside discourse representation theory and dynamic semantics to explain how reference is managed in real time, across interruptions, topic changes, and multi-voiced discourse. It is often used in theoretical analyses and in discussions of natural language processing to model referential resilience in discourse understanding.

Example: in a narrative with multiple narrators, the term “the doctor” may anchor to different individuals across chapters. Referentiemoement analyzes how readers infer which person is meant at each point, depending on context, prior mentions, and narrative cues.

Applications include discourse analysis, psycholinguistic experiments, and improvements in reference resolution within language technologies. Limitations include varying definitions and the challenge of operationalizing the concept in empirical studies. See also: anaphora, coreference, deixis, discourse representation theory.