specifying what subtypes of dogs there are and perhaps some salient instances.
The constitutive quale includes information about an entity's structural attributes. These attributes appear to divide
into three subtypes:
- The entity's sensory attributes: dimensionality, shape, size, color, texture, weight, smell, and so forth.
- The material(s) the entity is composed of.
- The entity's part structure; if it is itself inherently a part (such as a wing), what larger structure it is a part of.
When the entity is a physical object, much of this structure will interface with the associated Spatial Structure, as
suggested in section 11.5.
The other two qualia are more complex in that they involve actions in which the entity is a character. The agentive
quale encodes information about how the entity comes intoexistence: if an artifact, how it is made; if an organism, its
lifecycle stages. Pustejovsky views this as encoding primarily the entity's past. However, this quale might also encode
information about what an entitywilldevelopinto. For instance, anembryois characterized as something thatwillgrow
intoan animal; afiancéeis someone who is to be married. Of course, an embryo mightin fact be aborted and afiancee
might break off the engagement, so a specification of future developmental course must be properly modulated, a
point to which we return below.
The telic quale gives information about activities in which the entity takes part. Pustejovsky envisions this quale
primarilyas encompassingan object's purpose,for instancethata pencilisfor writingwith.However,itmakessenseto
includeherea rangeofothersorts ofaction.For instance, themoonhas nopurposeperse, butweneed toencode our
knowledge of its characteristic actions, for instance that it moves across the sky and changes shape in a monthlycycle.
The telic quale is the natural place to localize this information.
Another important sort of informationis how the entity“works.”For instance, pencil sharpeners all have the purpose
ofsharpening pencils, but differentsubtypes accomplishthisfunctionthroughdifferentactionsonthepart oftheuser.
These different subtypes can be differentiated by for min the constitutive quale, and the way each works will be
differentiated in the telic quale. (By extension, the fact that pencils need to be periodically sharpened presumably
belongs in the telic quale ofpenciltoo.)
Another possibility in the telic quale is an activity in which the entity is currently engaged. This is necessary to
characterize words such aspedestrian, passenger, andcustomer(Busa 1996; Macnamara and Reyes 1994). I may oftenwalk
to work, but on those occasions that I drive I a mnot a pedestrian. As many