referentials

Referentials are linguistic units whose primary function is to pick out a particular entity in the world or in discourse. They are expressions that stand for, or designate, referents rather than ascribing properties. In semantics and philosophy of language, referentials are contrasted with predicative or descriptive expressions that do not by themselves identify a specific entity.

Common types of referentials include proper names (Alice, Paris), definite noun phrases (the author of Hamlet, the tallest building in the city), demonstratives (this book, that man), and pronouns (she, they) or other indexicals (here, now). Some referentials are deictic, relying on immediate context to fix their reference, while others are anaphoric, linking back to a referent introduced earlier in the discourse.

A central distinction in the theory of reference is between referential and attributive readings. A referential reading identifies a specific entity in the context or world, while an attributive (or descriptive) reading describes a class or property without committing to a particular individual. For example, “the author of Hamlet” can be interpreted referentially as the specific person known in a given context, or attributively as someone who bears the property of being the author, regardless of which person is meant.

In discourse, referentials help establish and maintain common ground, enabling listeners or readers to track entities across sentences. They are central to processes of anaphora resolution and coreference in natural language processing, where systems determine which expressions refer to the same entity. Cross-linguistic variation exists in how languages mark definiteness, deixis, and referentiality, influencing how referentials are used and interpreted.