Re: THEORY: Tagalog "Voice" (was: Voice, Mood, and Tense)

Kristian Jensen wrote:
> The difference between voice and the focus system lies in the valency of
> the verbs. In voice languages, when you change the voice of a verb, you
> change its valency as well. In trigger languages, the valency remains the
> same across different focus patterns.
While your references to trigger languages are interesting, they are
often confusing to me, since I don't know even the basics about them.
Do you know of any good resources (preferably online) about trigger
systems?  They're so utterly fascinating to me that I'd like to be able
to experiment with them.

> In both verbal forms "bumili" and "binili", the valency between these
> two has not changed. That is, the number of required arguments of each
> of these verbs is exactly the same. In these cases, the required
> argument is the trigger itself:
Do all verbs in trigger languages require only one argument?

> Patient Focus
>    "Ang sabon ay binili"
>    TRG soap INV buy:PAT
>    The soap was the item that was bought.
Couldn't that just be translated as "The soap was bought"?

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