Re: "Tagalog, it's got a Trigger System," She Said (was; QUESTION-New project)

At 04:00 AM 2/15/99 -0500, Steg Belsky wrote:
>Actually, i just realized...
>Rokbeigalmki works exactly the same way!
>
>Because of the way verbs are formed/conjugated, when you say:
>_sha:hhya ozu-mwe_
>to mean "Shaya went" what you're literally saying is:
>"Shaya, he went"
>
>....weird....
>
>
>-Stephen (Steg)
Actually, in a sense, a huge number of languages work that way: all the
languages in which subject pronouns are optional because they're redundant
(the pronoun being implicit in the subject agreement marking on the verb),
like Spanish and Italian.  Like in Latin, if you say "Brutus Caesarem
interfecit" ("Brutus killed Caesar"), you're literally saying "Brutus, he
killed Caesar", because the "he" is implicit in the _-t_ suffix on the verb
(which marks third-person-singular subject agreement).  (Thus it's perfectly
grammatical and normal to say simply "Caesarem interfecit" ("he/she killed
Caesar) if it's clear from the context who the killer was.)

Furthermore, it seems clear from recent work on grammaticalization that
subject agreement markers originate as exactly the sort of "redundant"
subject pronouns that you're talking about.  The pronoun starts out being
used only when there's no noun subject, as in "Standard" English; then it
becomes mandatory even with a noun subject (as in Rokbeigalmki and in the
dialect of English that you're talking about); then it becomes
phonologically attached to the verb, first as a clitic and finally as an
affix.  (The line between "clitic" and "affix" is very fuzzy.)

Also, I think this phenomenon of mandatory subject pronouns is found in many
regional and ethnic varieties of English, not just yours.  I suspect that
this will eventually become part of the standard language, and that sometime
centuries or millennia in the future, verbs in whatever language(s) is/are
descended from English will have subject agreement prefixes that are
recognizably derived from these subject pronouns.

- Tim

-------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith
timsmith@global2000.net

The human mind is inherently fallible.  It sees patterns where there is only
random clustering, overestimates and underestimates odds depending on
emotional need, ignores obvious facts that contradict already established
conclusions.  Hopes and fears become detailed memories.  And absolutely
correct conclusions are drawn from completely inadequate evidence.
        - Alexander Jablokov, _Deepdrive_ (Avon Books, 1998, p. 269)