https://vekatze.github.io/neut/static-memory-management.html is a good explanation.

TL/DR: All functions are pass-by-value. To avoid complete tanking of performance, they have "noema" (same as a reference in other language), which contains pointer to "hyle" (reference target in other languages). Since the language is GC-free, the references cannot escape out of the block they are defined in.

The language authors really like inventing the new programming terms.