Re: Triggeriness ...

> > Then, Tagalog is not an accusative nor and ergative language,
> > because it has only one core case (the 'subject' or 'trigger' or
> > however you like to name it) and this case has none of the roles
> > assigned to it by default, being its semantics entirely determined
> > by and dependent on verbal voice.
>
>I'm uncertain as to your use of "core" here - what do you interpret
>_ng_ marked NPs as, if they aren't core arguments?
Core arguments are those that are required for the
sentence to be complete and grammatical, and the
number of core arguments taken by a verb is known
as its "valency". They don't need to be expressed
as phrases, they can be expressed as verbal
inflections. But it must be noted that sometimes,
depending on the verb, this may require arguments
that aren't usually treated as core in the language.
E.g. in "She planted the garden with roses", "with
roses" is here a core argument (* "She planted the
garden" - see note below), but "with ..." arguments
aren't usually core in English. The general core
arguments in English are the subject (which is
required by all verbs) and the primary and
secondary objects (required by the transitive
and ditransitive verbs). Then, AFAIK, the only
general core argument in Tagalog is the
trigger/subject, like in English intransitive
sentences, but I could be wrong.

Cheers,
Javier

Note: Well, maybe this sentence would be possible,
but then it would convey a different content: "She
planted the garden (somewhere)", and not "She planted
the garden (with something)". So actually we have
two different verbs here: "to plant something"
(valency=2) and "to plant something with something"
(valency=3), and it may well be the case that in
some other language those are expressed by
different words.