Re: Triggeriness ...

>I wasn't implying a heirachy of roles - simply that the range of roles
>available might be more "Nom/Acc-like" in some languages and more
>"Erg/Abs-like" in others.
If you only have one core case, as in trigger languages,
this single case must necessarily cover all the available
roles that the language admits for core cases, and then
it's the task of verbal voice to tell you which one is
to be interpreted in each case. A different option would
be that the verbal voices could imply several different
roles (e.g. that in an accusative-like type, the active
voice implied a trigger with sometimes the semantic role
of agent and sometimes the role of non-active subject,
while the passive voice implied always the role of patient,
and that in an ergative-like type the passive voice implied
a trigger with sometimes the role of patient and sometimes
the role of non-active subject, while the active voice
always implied the role of agent), but that would still
be a hierarchy, only that it would be expressed in the
verb (i.e. by voice) instead of in the noun (i.e. by case).
And you would still need to figure out a means to tell
what of the possible meanings is to be interpreted for
the trigger, maybe by introducing a split in the
subject/trigger that would turn it into a set of
mutually-excluding cases, so that when combined with
a multi-role verbal voice the assignment of role to
the subject/trigger argument would be determined by
which of the cases is used for it.

Cheers,
Javier