Referent

The word referent may be diachronically considered to derive from the Latin referentem, the present participle (in accusative form) of the verb referre ("carry back", see also etymology of refer(ence)); or synchronically analyzable as the addition of the suffix -ent to the verb refer on the model of other English words having that suffix.

In logic, the word referent is sometimes used to denote one of the two objects participating in a relation, the other being called the relatum.

The referent may be an actual person or object, or may be something more abstract, such as a set of actions.

Considerations of the possible arrangement of expressions which may be co-referential – having the same referent – have been undertaken by linguists engaged in the study of syntax, particularly since Noam Chomsky's launch of Government and Binding Theory (GBT) in the 1980s.

The subject of binding is largely concerned with the possible syntactic positions of co-referential noun phrases and pronouns.