referemse

Referemse is a theoretical term used in linguistics and information science to describe a mechanism for maintaining referential coherence across discourse. It refers to the process by which speakers and listeners update the assumed referent of an expression when the referent's status, label, or categorization changes over time, ensuring that later references remain anchored to the same underlying entity.

In practice, referemse involves context-sensitive mapping of expressions to entities or concepts and relies on shared knowledge about the discourse. It complements traditional concepts of coreference and anaphora by emphasizing how reference can be dynamically reallocated as information unfolds, without requiring repetition of explicit labels.

Applications include natural language processing, annotation of long texts, and maintenance of knowledge graphs or databases where entities may be renamed, merged, or reclassified. In literary analysis, referemse helps explain how readers track evolving identities of characters across chapters.

Example: a report notes that 'the council approved the plan' and later uses 'the body' to refer to the same collective, with referemse guiding interpretation to preserve continuity even though the label changes.

See also: anaphora, coreference, deixis, discourse coherence, referential cohesion.