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Re: Triggeriness ...

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Friday, December 12, 2003, 23:34
Isidora Zamora wrote:

>>>And presumably in a trigger conlang, you could trigger on any role you > > > wanted to (maybe within limits....)-- try GEN > > > > > > I stole John's mango > > > John_TRIG stole-GEN mango-P I-A > > > (it seems possible, but I've no idea how it could be equivalently > > translated > > > into e.g. Engl., as we can paraphrase Pool-TRIG bathe-LOC I-A [pool
swam-in
> > > [by] me] =~ a pool is where I swam (?)---maybe 'John is the person
whose
> > > mango I stole'????) > > > >"John's is the mango which I stole" is the best this xenophone can come
up
> >with. > > "It is John's mango that I stole" is the first thing that I came up with > and the one which sounds smoothest to me. >
Yes, that's another possible translation. Both Andreas and I, I think, were trying to get "John" into subject/focus position. In all cases we end up with a complex sentence in Engl.