the degree of attention directed to a referent by the interlocutors at a given point in the discourse. Example: it is generally the case that, in a sentence like He ate the cookies, the subject referent is more salient than the object referent in discourse. Salience is also considered to vary across different object concepts, other things being equal: people are more interested in other people, somewhat less so in animate objects, and less still in inanimate objects. Salience is the motivation for the Animacy Hierarchy and the Extended Animacy Hierarchy. (Section 6.1.1)