referentswithin

Referentswithin is a term used in linguistics and discourse analysis to describe referents whose identity is determined within the immediate discourse unit in which a referring expression occurs, typically the sentence or clause, without requiring information from later parts of the discourse. The concept emphasizes locality in coreference, where pronouns and definite descriptions link to antecedents that are accessible within the same clause or adjacent context. In practice, referentswithin aligns with local binding conditions found in many theories of syntax and semantics and is often invoked when modeling anaphora resolution in small-scale discourse segments rather than across entire texts.

In analysis, a referent that is within scope may be contrasted with referents outside the local unit, which would require cross-clausal or global discourse information. Prototypical examples include pronouns that resolve to a clearly introduced noun phrase within the same clause or sentence, such as in "Maria introduced herself," where "herself" points to "Maria" within the local structure. By focusing on within-unit resolution, referentswithin helps account for cases where cross-sentential links are blocked or dispreferred due to salience or syntactic constraints.

The term remains modest in usage and is not universally standardized; it is often discussed within broader topics like anaphora, coreference, and discourse representation theory. See also coreference, anaphora, discourse representation theory.