Core Cues to a Target

A core cue is an element of information about the target that the trigger is lexicalized to provide to the hearer. Seemingly all triggers provide such core cues in addition to their main function of initiating the 3-stage targeting procedure in the hearer. Core cues can be divided into those that specify intrinsic as against contingent properties of the target. Intrinsic properties include a target’s ontological category, plexity, animacy and sapience, sex, gender, substantiality, domainality, and constituent type. Its ontological category, in turn, can be that of an entity, an action, an event, a spatial location, a temporal location, a path, a manner, a quality, a quantity, and a degree, among others. Contingent properties of the target that triggers’ core cues can specify include its degree of remove, direction of remove, perceivability, compactness, and syntactic location. A target’s degree of remove from a reference point, in turn, can pertain to its spatial, temporal, personal, social, or experiential remove, while this last can in turn pertain to memorial, attentional, recognitional, or affective/perspectival remove.