discoursebound

Discoursebound is a term used in linguistics and related fields to describe linguistic expressions, interpretations, or data whose meaning or reference is constrained by the surrounding discourse. In this usage, an element is considered discoursebound if its interpretation depends on information that precedes or accompanies the current utterance, such as topic, focus, or prior referents within the conversation.

The term blends discourse with bound, signaling that the interpretive scope of certain forms is not fixed in isolation but is limited or guided by the ongoing communicative context. Discoursebound analysis often overlaps with studies of anaphora, deixis, and cohesion, where pronouns, demonstratives, and other indexicals derive their reference from the discourse structure rather than from fixed world knowledge alone.

In linguistics, discoursebound phenomena help explain why identical forms can have different references across contexts. Examples include pronouns whose antecedents must be established by previous turns, demonstratives whose topical focus shapes reference, and certain presupposed or pragmatically licensed expressions that rely on shared discourse knowledge.

In computational linguistics and natural language processing, discoursebound concepts inform modeling approaches to dialogue systems and conversational agents. Systems that track discourse state, topic shifts, and referent continuity rely on discoursebound constraints to maintain coherent interpretation across turns and to resolve ambiguities that static, sentence-level analysis would miss.

See also: anaphora, deixis, discourse coherence, coreference resolution, reference tracking.