Re: Triggeriness ...

Javier BF wrote at 2003-12-16 18:21:10 (-0500)
 > >http://www.sultry.arts.usyd.edu.au/LFG98/austro/foley/fintro.htm )
 >
 > Really interesting page.
 > Thanks a lot for the link!
 >
Yes... if you liked that, be sure to see Kroeger's reply to it:
 http://www.sultry.arts.usyd.edu.au/LFG98/austro/kroeger/kintro.htm

I confess I've never really gotten around to fully reading either
(I've been reading through them again, with this discussion of
triggers on the list), but basically I think he agrees with Foley on
symmetric voice but not on precategoriality.

 > And it has provided me with an appropriate term ("pivot") for the
 > central argument of hierarchical ("asymmetrical") argument schemes,
 > which I've been uncomfortably referring to as "subject" in the lack
 > of a better name (that word "subject" tends to be identified with
 > "agent" by Westerners because that's the default association in the
 > Western accusative-type languages, but subjects can also be
 > semantically patient or experiencer).
 >

I think "pivot" originates with Dixon's work on ergativity.

Another thing I read part of, not so long ago, which perhaps relates
to this discussion (it's cited by one of the other papers at the same
workshop as Foley and Kroeger above) is a PhD dissertation, Manning
1994, on "Ergativity: Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations".
Quite a lot of the first chapter concerns Tagalog, which is why I
bring it up.

http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/papers/manning/

It's pretty long, so you might want to look at this review first:

http://www.ling.rochester.edu/faculty/runner/dnload/Ergativity.pdf