Nearest referent

The nearest referent is a grammatical term sometimes used when two or more possible referents of a pronoun, or other part of speech, cause ambiguity in a text. However "nearness", proximity, may not be the most meaningful criterion for a decision, particularly where word order, inflection and other aspects of syntax are more relevant.

The concept of nearest referent is found in analysis of various languages, including classical languages Greek,^[1] Latin^[2] and Arabic.^[3][4] It may create or resolve variant views in interpretation of a text.

There are other models than nearest referent for deciding what a pronoun, or other part of speech, refers to, and reference order distinguishes pronoun-referent structures where:

• the pronoun follows its antecedent (Forward Reference, FW)
• the pronoun precedes its referent (Backward Reference, BW)^[5]

This is also described as anaphoric reference (anaphor, previous referent) and cataphoric reference (cataphor, following referent).^[6]