Re: Triggeriness ...

>What "case" is the marker then?
English nominative and Basque absolutive are
the main core case of each of those languages,
which is the case they use for the 'subject'
(= the central argument towards which the verbal
event appears focalized), and this function is
the one that in Tagalog performs the 'trigger'
case. I'm not aware of a cover term to designate
'subject' cases in general, but I'm sure it
would be very useful. Maybe we could label it
"subjectual" or "focalitive".


>I still do not see the trigger markers as case markers, because they *do
>not* have any other role than to indicate where emphasis of the verb is.
The actual role of the trigger, AFAIK, is to mark
the _subject_ of the verb, i.e. the main (and in
this case of Tagalog, the only one) core argument
of the verb - which is the argument whose assignation
of semantic role may vary depending on the choice
of verbal voice (and also on the choice between
intransitive and transitive, in the languages
where this option is available) and the one that
appears as focus of the verbal event description.

But there seems to be a lot of confusion between
the concepts of topic, focus and emphasis, so let
me try to clarify them:

FOCUS - the center of the verbal event description

(expressed in English by verbal voice)

"The boy hit the dog"
(focalized towards: the boy = agent -> active voice)
-> Who hit the dog? The boy did.

"The dog was hit by the boy"
(focalized towards: the dog = patient -> passive voice)
-> Who was hit by the boy? The dog was.

I think this focalization of the verb is what you're
calling "emphasis of the verb". But notice that a
different thing is the emphasis placed on whatever
element as _underlining_ so that the hearer pays
special attention to it and gets the information
right:

EMPHASIS - the underlined element

(expressed in English by additional stress or by
a change of intonation or, in writing, by the use
of capitals, boldface, italics or underlining)

Agent-focalized sentences, with different emphases:

"The BOY hit the dog" / "The _boy_ hit the dog"
(Listen! I said "boy" and not "girl")
-> Was it the boy or the girl who hit the dog?
It was the boy, and not the girl, who hit the dog

"The boy hit the DOG" / "The boy hit the _dog_"
(Listen! I said "dog" and not "cat")
-> Was it the dog or the cat that the boy hit?
It was the dog, and not the cat, that the boy hit

"The boy HIT the dog" / "The boy _hit_ the dog"
(Listen! I said "hit" and not "caressed")
-> Was it hitting or caressing that the boy did
to the dog? It was hitting, and not caressing,
what the boy did to the dog.

Patient-focalized sentences, with different emphases:

"The DOG was hit by the boy" / "The _dog_ was hit
by the boy" (Listen! I said "dog" and not "cat")
-> Was it the dog or the cat that was hit by the boy?
It was the dog, and not the cat, that was hit by the boy.

"The dog was hit by the BOY" / "The dog was hit by
the _boy_" (Listen! I said "boy" and not "girl")
-> Was it the boy or the girl who the dog was hit by?
It was the boy, and not the girl, who the dog was hit by.

"The dog was HIT by the boy" / "The dog was _hit_ by
the boy" (Listen! I said "hit" and not "caressed")
-> Was it hitting or caressing what the dog was done to
by the boy? It was hitting, and not caressing, what
the dog was done to by the boy.

And there's still the alternative of modifying the
sentence topic, in addition to the above modifications
of focus and emphasis:

TOPIC - what the sentence is a comment about

(expressed in English by placing it at the beginning
of the sentence)

Basic distinction:

"The boy hit the dog"
(Now look at the boy and listen to what I have to say
about him) -> As for the boy, he hit the dog.

"The dog the boy hit"
(Now look at the dog and listen to what I have to say
about it) -> As for the dog, the boy hit it.

And now that second sentence combined with
a different emphasis or focus:

"The DOG the boy hit" / "The _dog_ the boy hit"
(Now look at the dog, and not at the cat, and listen
to what I have to say about it) -> As for the dog,
and not the cat, the boy hit it.

"The dog the boy HIT" / "The dog the boy _hit_"
(Now look at the dog and listen to what I have to
say about it) -> As for the dog, the boy hit, and
not caressed, it.

"The dog, it was hit by boy"
(Now look at the dog and listen to what I have to say
about it) -> As for the dog, it was hit by the boy.

I hope the above examples serve to clarify the
concepts of sentence topic(= theme), verbal
focus(= subject) and word emphasis(= underlining).

Now, the descriptions I've seen of Tagalog seem
to have those concepts confused and talk about
"focus" and "emphasis" as if they were the same
thing. So if there's any Tagalog speaker around
here, could you please translate for us the
above examples to show how Tagalog deals with
those three concepts? I mean, so that we can
see if there is actually the possibility of
marking topic, focus and emphasis separately
as in English, or instead all or some of those
concepts are actually blended inseparably
into the trigger.

Cheers,
Javier