The categories in a theory (an actual lexicon or grammar) are abstract semiotic objects which represent sets of concrete objects or instances. A sign instance is a token and its denotation (i.e. an utterance and the space-time context in which it occurs). A token can also be abstracted away from its context to a greater or lesser degree, for instance in a written text. It can never by totally divorced from this context, as the perceiver of the text must at least share the code pattern with the producer of the text. In the linguistic context (which is always a metatheoretical context), a query to a given theory operationalised as a knowledge-based system, is an instance or token in this sense. An instance (token) of a most specific object is specified by name and by one or more of the attributes which the theory provides for the most specific object or its generalisations.