Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:
>
>
> > > Assume we want to translate the English sentences "I bathed _in the
pool_"
> >
> > given two arguments, there would be two possiblities.
> >
> [snip]
> > According to my
> > > (apparently erroneous) understanding, these would become something
like
> > >
> > > the_pool-TRIG bathed-LOC 1st.sg-S (i)
> > this look like locative focus (sort of lit. "the pool was- bathed-in by
me"
> > = proper Engl. "the pool is where I bathed)-- IIRC, lst sg. would carry
the
> > "oblique" marker in Tag., it definitely wouldn't be marked as "Subject"
> > since "pool" is the grammatical "subject". I think.........
>
> The underlines in the English was supposed to indicate that the pool was
what
> the speaker considered the important piece of information; the focus.
Yes, right. To show that the [item in focus] is most closely linked with the
verb. Tagalog, for ex., uses _ang_ to indicate this for common nouns (_si_
for pronouns and pers.names). Cf. also
maganda ang bahay (ma-ganda ang bahay= stative-beautiful ANG house) "the
house is beautiful"
maganda si Maria "Maria is beautiful" (ganda for humans might not be
appropriate, I'm not sure)
> I was on purpose avoiding the term "subject", thinking that "S" was the
more
> general category.
Yes, here we see the difficulty of describing trigger systems with
traditional terminology. "Subject", "focus", "topic" all become somewhat
synonymous. But in your example, "pool" is IMO the "subject" of "bathe-LOC",
just as "Mary" is the subj. of the Engl. passive "Mary was kissed by John".
At any rate, the _name_ of the thing is not important;
> what's interesting is how the marker used related to them in my other
examples.
>
Right!!