Passing NEW to functions inside a trigger function...

All,
I'm unable to find this question addressed in the archive, tho' it seems
rather obvious. One often needs to dispatch on different subsets of the
data in NEW inside a PLPGSQL trigger function. It would be most
convenient to just pass NEW itself (or NEW.*) to the function thus
called, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that. Any use of NEW
inside a function call imbedded in the trigger function, whether in a
SELECT INTO, EXECUTE or PERFORM, leads to a:

ERROR: NEW used in query that is not in a rule

(or sometimes "relation NEW not found.")

I've seen syntax for passing a row of data in ordinary functions, but
not inside triggers.

Any enlightenment appreciated!
Rich Cullingford
rculling(at)sysd(dot)com