Re: Triggeriness ...

Quoting Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>:

> Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> writes:
> >How does that differ from what cases do?
>
> I can hit a ball, and you can hit a ball, but that does not mean we are
> the same person.
No, but you belong to the same category.

> If you want to be liberal, we can say all languages have case. However i'm
> speaking of explicit case, not implied.
That was not clear. Still, the Tagalog trigger does look like an explicit case
marker.

> As far as I know, case applies to nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, right?
> If so, then none of the nouns have any cases on them. The triggers are
> describing what the verb is *focusing* on, much like emphasizing words by
> intonation.
Terminology seems to've changed during this discussion; "trigger" used to
refer to the marker indicating the focused noun. If you are now refering the
the verbal markers telling us what function the focused nouns has, that's
indeed not case markers. I'd follow Javier's lead and say they're a kind of
voice markers.

> Let me ask this, if case languages require the nouns to take case affixes
> to make the relationships with *each other* understood, then why aren't we
> seeing tagalog nouns taking obligatory case markers?
Actually, case affixes indicate how the noun arguments relate to the _verb_
(how else could you have case affixes in intransitive sentences without
oblique arguments?).

> I see them taking
> either the trigger marker, or not (and sometimes neither).
I can imagine a noun having a trigger marker, or not having a trigger marker,
but _neither_? I would not believe that when I saw it with my own eyes!

> I see it like this, the verb has affixes that are telling you what the
> speaker is *emphasizing*, NOT telling you how the words are working in
> relation to *each other* (and this is how i understand "case" to mean)
I think you should update your understanding of "case".

Again, I don't know Tagalog, but from the descriptions and examples by you and
others in this thread, it looks like a lang that's grammaticalized emphasis,
and uses case marking to indicate it.

                                                         Andreas