Re: Triggeriness ...

Hello,

>> This discussion of trigger languages is making me confused
To be sincere, I don't see why people make such
a fuss of this. Maybe because, instead of calling
subjects "subjects", somebody thought in Tagalog
the label "subject" was better changed to "trigger",
so as to make it look really exotic or something.


>Nothing to shoot down, as far as I can see...Such a system is sui generis
>IMO-- the point being that you can focus (in my understanding, make a
>subject of) any of the various possible arguments of a verb.  In Tagalog,
>that means 1. Agent/actor (~"active voice") 2. patient (~"passive voice")
3.
>instrument 4. location.
The structure is not at all "sui generis", and
you yourself seem to perceive this when you mention
"make a subject of", "active voice" and "passive
voice". The structure of "trigger" languages is
nothing but merely an extension of the very well
known and familiar concept of verbal voice, so as
to allow arguments other than just the object
to be promotable to the position of subject, that
is, to the position of the unmarked case with which
the verb agrees and towards which it is "focalized"
- or, as you put it, so as "to make a subject of"
what are usually treated as non-core cases.

English features (in-, mono- and ditransitive)
"active/medial" and (in- and monotransitive)
"passive" voices. Basque verbs, for its part, do
not feature a single subject (carrying instead
pluripersonal agreement), so there aren't exactly
voices in the way of English - where within one
same multi-core-case(= transitive) scheme one can
choose to place the agent or the object as the
verb-focalized subject - but instead 4 core-case
schemes: "nor", "nor-nori", "nor-nork" and
"nor-nori-nork" (nor=absolutive, nori=dative,
nork=ergative), there being no distinction between
active and passive, which are subsumed into the
ergative schemes (or maybe there being only
passive since the object is always the unmarked
absolutive case, although it is not the only one
with which the verb agrees so this is not clearly
focalized towards it), while the medial voice
is expressed by means of the non-ergative
schemes. Tagalog for its part offers yet another
alternative: only 1 single-core-case(= intransitive)
scheme - being its only core-case, the subject,
marked as the "trigger" case - with more than
just two voice options: active, passive,
instrumental, locative (and maybe some other),
depending on what argument is being promoted and
focalized as subject of the verb. And that's all.
There's nothing strange or incomprehensible in
that if it is explained in reference to similar
concepts in more well-known languages. All the
unnecessary fuss arises from the "exotic" and
confusing explanation of that structure as
featuring a supposedly unique verbal concept
of "trigger".

In English, one sometimes feels the need to
use those additional verbal voices, e.g. when
saying "a slept-in bed", where a "locative
passive participle" is used - which, similarly
to what is done with the "triggered verbs" in
Tagalog, is formed by attaching the locative
preposition to the verb so as to make its
objectual passive subject turn into a locative
passive subject, i.e. to change the "objectual
passive voice" of the verbal participle into
a "locative passive voice" by means of attaching
the appropriate "object-triggered" case-mark
to the verb. In some other cases, English
uses a different verbal root to get a transitive
scheme featuring a locative object, e.g. "live
in a house" versus "inhabit a house", somehow
analogously to the use of different roots to
differentiate medial- and active-voice meanings
("die" versus "kill"). Then in English,
monotransitive verbs (such as "hit"), when turned
into passive voice, become intransitive ("be hit"),
then taking only the "triggered object"(= passive
subject) as core argument, being the agent demoted
to a mere non-core complement: "be hit (by ...)".
Analogously, verbs in Tagalog all follow this
pattern of taking only the "trigger"(= subject)
case as core argument. Contrariwise, in Basque
the absolutive, dative and ergative cases are
always core and none of them by itself seems
to have the verb clearly focalized towards it,
being the arguments marked as focus by word order,
placing them in the syntactic slot known as
"galdegaia" ("the queried thing", which
corresponds to the position right before the
verb).

Cheers,
Javier

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