Re: Triggeriness ...

Takatunu wrote:

> A. Facts first:
>
> (i) The core actors of the Tagalog lexy equivalent to the English verb "to
> plant" are the gardener, the roses, the garden, a possible intrument, and
> maybe more, whatever you call them (agent, experiencer, subject, patient,
> locative patient, focus, instrument, instrumental patient, etc.)
>
> (ii) Each of these different actors may be picked as the main actor of the
> lexy "to plant" and becomes the predicative pivot for expressing the
process
> of planting.
>
> (iii) Languages with this capacity are called "trigger languages".
>
> (iv) English verbal voices lack that capacity.
>
> (v) Ergo English does not qualify as a trigger language.
>
Impeccable logic. My only caveat--
the concept/verb 'to plant' in both English and Tagalog can have the
following arguments:
Obligatory: Agent/actor, Patient/object
Optional: Location, Instrument (and perhaps others).

In Engl. only the oblig. ones can be subjectivized; in Tag. all of them can
be. (though L and I are still optional).
In Fillmore's system: PLANT [A, O, (L) (I)]
A peculiarity of this particular verb in Engl. is that _either_ Patient or
Locative can be made Direct Object. (Fillmore's case grammar has a way of
expressing this, with interlinked parentheses which I'll indicate here with
( )+( )-- so the "case frame" of this verb in Engl. is actually PLANT [ A
(O)+(L) (I) ].  Depending on which you choose as DO, you get
I planted roses(O) [in the garden(L) [with a shovel(I)]] or
I planted the garden(L) [with roses(O) [with a shovel]]

> B. This is what I gather from some posts on this thread:
>
snip reductio ad absurdum
> (iv) English is underlying all other languages.
I don't think anyone has proposed this, except perhaps Chomskians-- I once
heard one of his disciples declare, "to do linguistics, you don't need to
know any language but English". (what he meant was actually "...any language
but [one's native tongue]"-- he was denying the need for a linguist to
bother with foreign langs. Pffft.)
>
> C. Now, Rivarol's famous thesis:
>
> (i) French natural word order is Subject-Verb-Object.
> (ii) French people are the most logical people in the world.
> (iii) Ergo the most logical word order is Subject-Verb-Object.
Ça va sans dire, n'est-ce pas?.......:-))))
>
> D. A few random questions:
> (iv) Do all languages still revolve around "agent" and "patient" just
> because English verbal voices are maimed and certain linguists cannot
> believe ...
for "cannot believe" (so 19th C!!),  I'd prefer "are always amazed"

that some people have the ability to speak languages whose
> predicate-argument systems don't hierarchy actors but put several of them
on
> an equal footing rather as possible predicates or core arguments?
As the weekly vocab exercises prove, (given the vocabulary) you can say
anything in any language in a myriad of ways. "Your grammar may differ".
>
> (v) Could anyone explain how the Ubiquitous Agent-Patient theory works
with
> intransitive 2-actor verbs:
(Eh? an intransitive verb, by definition, has only 1 _obligatory_ argument)

 what actor is the "primary" object and "patient"
> of the Japanese verb michiru "to fill": the container or the content?
Sounds like Jap. "fill" is similar to Indo. penuh-i:
ia memenuhi glas dengan air 'he filled the glass with water' (I"m not sure
"ia memenuhi air dalam glass" works as an active sentence, nor "air memenuhi
glas" 'water filled the glass' , but the passive of the latter certainly
does-- glas dipenuhi air 'the glass was filled with water'.  But that may be
idiomatic, or a pecularity of this particular verb in this particular
language.

Note that in many languages, "fill" and others have an additional level of
derivation that is not so apparent in Engl.-- fill is a causative derivation
of "full" (as you know, it was also a causative in Gmc., fulljan or
somesuch, whence the umlauts in both Engl fill and Germ. füllen).  That's
certainly the case in Kash, and IIRC in your conlang too.

Similarly Engl. "open" has no surface-marked derivation, but the semantics
of
1.The door is open
2.The door opened
3.John opened the door
can be analyzed as having underlying features 1. state, 2.
inchoative/result, 3.causative.   In this regard, I don't quite like
Fillmore's system, where OPEN [O (A)] can lead only to 1(O) or 3(O A);
surely he has a way to derive 2, but I don't recall it offhand-- it would
not, however, involve an additional argument

And
> what is the "patient" of the Japanese verb wakaru "to understand": the one
> understanding something or the thing understood?
IMO "understand" requires at least 2 arguments-- the thng understood
(clearly a P or O) as well as an "understander" (probably technically an
"Experiencer"-- but since the "Exp." role is characteristic of just a
certain class of verbs, I think it is usually subsumed under "Agent/actor".
On consideration, it might be a valid role, since in some languages an Exp.
is subjectivized in a different case than an Actor-- Georgian IIRC.; in that
case Engl. and most European langs. would have a rule somewhere, "Exp.and A
are expressed with the same ["nominative"] case".)