Re: Trigger Languages?
| From: | Jeff Jones <jeffsjones@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, February 12, 2003, 7:25 |
|---|
On Sun, 9 Feb 2003 16:21:02 +0100, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
>En réponse à Jeff Jones <jeffsjones@...>:
>
>> I read all the recent posts about trigger languages and some
>> additional archived messages, and there's still a few things I don't
>> understand. How are relative and participial clauses handled? Does the
>> relative pronoun always take the trigger? Does the trigger case affix on
>> the verb indicate the case of the participle's implied subject?
>
>Well, it all depends on how the trigger language handles relative clauses.
>If accusative languages handle relative clauses so differently (look at
>English with its postposed relative subclauses with relative pronouns,
>while Japanese uses preposed relative subclauses without relative
>pronouns). Tagalog, the most well known trigger language, doesn't have
>relative pronouns for instance. Instead, it uses a "ligature" (na or -ng)
>to link the noun to the verb of the relative clause (in any order, so the
>ligature can be on the noun if it's followed by the verb, and vice versa).
>In this case, the trigger on the verb of the relative clause does indeed
>indicate the function of the antecedent in the sentence.
OK.
I finally had a chance to look -- it is confusing. I didn't get any more
out of it than what you said above.
>My Itakian handles relative subclauses very differently. Actually, it
>doesn't have subclauses at all. Instead, it goes all the way to
>nominalisation of the verb, which is then juxtaposed to the noun it
>completes. The function of the antecedent in the relative "clause" is
>given by the kind of nominalised form the verb took.
>
>As for participles, I don't know how they work in Tagalog (there is
>something on the page I gave to you, but I can't understand it. It's much
>too unclear). In Itakian, as I said, each verb has a number (five at most)
>of nominalised forms which correspond to participles, and whose form
>depends on the function of the implied trigger. So there is an Actor
>participle, a Patient participle,
>etc...
>
>> Also, has anyone done a trigger auxlang or loglang? It's hard to
>> follow examples because of the additional complications in natlangs and
>> naturalistic artlangs.
>
>Saalangal seems to be the closest to what you're looking for (since AFAIK
>it's straightforward and regular enough in its grammar), but unfortunately
>there seems not to be much about it on the web :(( . My Itakian is also
>very straightforward, but has too many other quirks to be of use for your
>purpose.
I suspected as much.
>Now, isn't a trigger auxlang a contradiction in terms? ;)))))
Why should it be?
Jeff