determinerbound

Determinerbound is a theoretical concept in linguistics and natural language processing that describes how determiners constrain the possible interpretations of noun phrases within a discourse model. It captures the bounds on referential possibilities that a determiner introduces, thereby shaping meaning in context.

Formally, a determinerbound relates a noun phrase to the set of referents it can denote in a given context. Different determiner types yield different bounds: definite determiners typically bound to a unique, identifiable referent; indefinites allow a non-unique set; demonstratives anchor to the deictic center; every and some widen or restrict the set depending on scope.

In computational work, determinerbound can be estimated from corpus statistics, discourse structure, and world knowledge. It informs coreference resolution, information extraction, and machine translation by indicating when a determiner will sufficiently constrain interpretation.

Example: "the book" usually refers to a single specific book within the discourse, giving a bound of one referent; "a book" denotes at least one possible book, yielding a wider bound; "these books" confines interpretation to books near the speaker.

Origin and use: determinerbound is a neologism used in discussions of referential semantics and discourse analysis. It is not a standard term in every subfield, but it serves as a shorthand to discuss how determiners modulate referential scope in linguistic theory and NLP systems.