Singlereferring

Singlereferring is a term used in linguistics to describe a referential strategy in which a discourse relies on a single explicit referring expression to establish a referent, with later mentions depending on context, pronouns, or ellipsis rather than repeated labeling. The approach aims to minimize redundancy while preserving cohesion and trackability of entities across clauses or sentences.

Two informal varieties are commonly discussed. Static singlereferring begins with a full noun phrase to introduce the entity and preserves its reference through subsequent statements mainly by pronouns or ellipsis. Dynamic singlereferring allows the referent to be reidentified indirectly or by context in different parts of the text, without repeatedly naming it.

Cross-linguistic variation: In English, authors often use a single introduction followed by pronouns; in pro-drop languages, zero anaphora may create long spans without explicit rementions.

Examples illustrate how singlereferring operates in practice. Example 1: The author won the prize. He celebrated. Example 2: The plan was approved by the city council. It faced immediate criticism.

In natural language processing and discourse analysis, the concept is used to model how cohesion is maintained with minimal explicit naming. The term remains somewhat niche and is discussed alongside related ideas such as anaphora, coreference, deixis, and ellipsis.

See also

- Anaphora

- Coreference

- Discourse cohesion

- Ellipsis

- Pro-drop languages