(12) a.Pro-PP:
Please put your coathere[pointing] and put your hatthere[pointing].
He wentthataway[pointing].
b. Pro-VP:
Can youdo that[pointing]?
Can youdo this[demonstrating]?
c. that...happen:
That[pointing] had better nothappenaround here.
d. Pro-manner adverbial:
You shuffle cardsthus/so/like this/this way[demonstrating].
I used to walkthat way/like that[pointing to someone walking in a funny fashion].
e. Pro-measure expression:
Thefish that got away wasthis/yaylong [demonstrating].
There were aboutthis manypeople at Joe's party too. [gesturing toward the assembled throng]
f. Pro-time-PP:
You may start...right...now! [clapping]The analysis of (10) suggests parallel analyses for these examples: the deictic expressions refer to entities in the
conceptualized worldthat can be picked out withthe aid of the accompanying gesture. But theentitiesreferred in (12)
arenotobjects. In(12a),hereandthererefer tolocationsor places;thatawayrefers toa direction.Do thisanddo thatin(12b)
andthat...happenin (12c) refer to actionsor events(goings-on). The expressions in (12d) also refer to actions but draw
attention to the manner in which the action is performed. The expressions in (12e) refers to sizes and amounts, and
nowin (12f) refers to a time.
In order to accommodate these possibilitiesfor reference, it is useful to introduce a kind of“ur-feature”that classifies
the entity being referred to into anontological type. Each of the ontological types—objects, actions, locations, and so
forth—has its own characteristic conditions of identity and individuation. It is a task both for natural language
semantics and for cognitive psychology/neuroscience to work out the logic and the characteristic perceptual
manifestationsofeachtype. Events, forinstance, playa roleinmanyversionsofformal semantics, followingDavidson
(1967); some of the psychophysics of visually perceived events is explored by Michotte (1954) and Cutting (1981).
Locationsand directionshavenotplayed muchof a role in formal semantics, but are central inCognitiveGrammar (e.
g. Langacker 1987; Talmy 1983; Herskovits 1986; Vandeloise 1986) and havefigured in recent experimental research,
much of which is described in Bloom et al. (1996).