purposemarkers

Purposemarkers are devices that signal the intended purpose behind an action, utterance, or artifact. In linguistics and discourse analysis, they cover lexical items, constructions, and markers that encode goal, function, or motive. They help listeners or readers interpret why something is done and how it relates to subsequent events or outcomes.

Linguistic purposemarkers include adverbial phrases and infinitival constructions such as in order to, so as to, for the purpose of, to, and in order that. Some languages also use dedicated affixes or clitics to mark purposive meaning. Purposemarkers interact with mood, aspect, and modality, and their use can influence how a sentence is interpreted in terms of emphasis and sequence.

In computational contexts, purposemarkers can refer to metadata tags or annotation labels applied to data to indicate its intended use, such as training, evaluation, or safety testing. They support responsible AI by clarifying context, restrictions, and provenance for each data item.

Cross-linguistic variation means not all languages have separate purpose markers; others express purpose through syntax, morphology, or word order. Ambiguity can arise when a marker also signals time, cause, or sequence apart from purpose.

See also: purpose clause, intention marker, functional discourse marker.