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Re: Triggeriness ...

From:Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 16, 2003, 1:54
takatunu wrote:
> > B. This is what I gather from some posts on this thread: > > (i) The two core actors of the English active verb "to plant" are the > gardener and the roses. > > (ii) The gardener is called the "agent" and the roses the "patient" of that > English verb. > > (iii) All other possible actors of this English verb are "secondary", > including the garden. > > (iv) English is underlying all other languages. > > (v) Ergo (1) the only core actors of the Tagalog lexy equivalent to the > English verb "to plant" are necessarily the agent and a "patient", (2) the > Tagalog patient is necessarily the roses and (3) the "trigger system" > doesn't exist.
I don't think anybody was arguing for that (and certainly not premise iv). It looked to me like some people were arguing that trigger systems were a particular kind of voice system that can promote any semantic case role to a core argument.

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Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>