Re: Triggeriness ...

Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> writes:
>
>IMO-- the point being that you can focus (in my understanding, make a
>subject of) any of the various possible arguments of a verb.
This is how i understand it.


>In Tagalog,
>that means 1. Agent/actor (~"active voice") 2. patient (~"passive voice")
>3.
>instrument 4. location.  In related languages there may be additional
>possibilities, like Time and Benefactive (though I see that Tsou conflates
>Inst and Ben.). And some verbs (experientials?) might not be able to focus
>on all possibilites-- just a guess.
>>

Tagalog also has benefactive. My Tagalog instructor said that while
theoretically all verbs can take the triggers, they don't usually do. The
different triggers also add nuances to the verb, so it's not strictly
focusing on the different nouns int he sentence.
>
>
>
> According to my
>> (apparently erroneous) understanding, these would become something like
>>
>> the_pool-TRIG bathed-LOC 1st.sg-S (i)
>this look like locative focus (sort of lit. "the pool was- bathed-in by
>me"
>= proper Engl. "the pool is where I bathed)--  IIRC, lst sg. would carry
>the
>"oblique" marker in Tag., it definitely wouldn't be marked as "Subject"
>since "pool" is the grammatical "subject".  I think.........

Pronouns in Tagalog come in two flavors (as in Saalangal) a triggered form
and a non-triggered form. Their usage can be a little illogical (i guess)
when using words like "Gusto" (like):

Gusto ko ng isda - I like fish, where "ko" is the non-triggered pronoun,
and "ng" marks isda as non triggered as well.
>
>
>you could have (i.a) I-TRIG bathed-ACT pool-OBL
>(where OBL might possibly could be a locative prep., I'm not sure) That
>translates : I bathed in the pool
I think Tagalog would use a preposition here:

Naligo ako sa dagat - ACTOR-bathe-completed i-TRIG PREP sea

(so i cheated a bit and changed pool to sea :)).

here, "sea" is understood as oblique even without a marker, because the
pronoun is in the trigger form. In essence, the preposition is marking the
noun as oblique by default.

the ma- prefix (here, conjugated to "na") is used for BOTH an actor and an
object focus. The differentiation is the way it is used. When used as an
object focus, the doer is *always* unfocused, and the receiver is focused
(duh :)). This tells you who did the action and who received it:

Makita ng bata ang titser - OBJ-see-continuing OBL child TRIG teacher -
The child sees the teacher.

If we re-arranged it, switching the markers but keeping word order we get:

Makita ang bata ng titser - OBJ-see TRIG child OBL teacher - The teacher
sees the child.

However, Tagalog prefers to put the doer after the verb. Also, not all
verbs take this trigger to indicate the object trigger/focus. The trigger
-in is the most common trigger for verbs using object focus (I- is the
second most common, followed by ma and an) I am not a native speaker, but
this is what i can garner from my resources.



> They are clearly much more complicated than any Indonesian language
>of my experience.
>
>
They are quite complicated, especially getting the right triggers. Order
words is simple, but figuring out when to use what verb with what trigger
is tricky, not helped that many of the triggers are the same across a
couple of categories. I was actually able to write a page long essay in
Tagalog by the end of a Tagalog course i took. However i have lost use of
it due to lack of native speakers and opportunity to use it.