pointersgrammatical

Pointersgrammatical is a neologism used in linguistics and natural language processing to describe a class of grammatical phenomena in which linguistic elements function as pointer-like links to other parts of the sentence or discourse. The term blends the idea of a pointer from data structures with grammatical relations, and it is used to model how expressions reference antecedents, discourse entities, or copied material in a compact way.

In pointergrammatical analyses, a grammatical element may carry a pointer field that identifies its referent or source position within a structure. Pointers can be structural, linking a dependent to a head, or discourse-oriented, linking a pronoun or anaphor to its antecedent. This approach supports long-distance dependencies and ellipsis by allowing surface forms to encode underlying links succinctly.

Example: John_i said that Mary would arrive, and he_i left soon after. Here the pronoun he_i points to John_i as the antecedent. Another example: The committee announced that it_i had approved the plan, where it_i functions as a pointer to the committee as the governing referent. These examples illustrate how pointers enable compact representation of reference and copying in both syntax and discourse.

Applications and relations: Pointersgrammatical ideas inform coreference resolution, parsing strategies for long-distance dependencies, and certain forms of information-structuring analyses. They are related to, but distinct from, traditional anaphora theory, since the emphasis is on pointer-based links within the syntactic or discourse structure rather than purely on textual agreement.

Critique and status: As a developing concept, pointersgrammatical faces questions about ambiguity, cross-language generality, and computational overhead. It remains a theoretical tool with limited cross-linguistic consensus, but it offers a unifying lens for modeling reference and ellipsis in complex sentences.