Again trigger & stuff

Hello,

From a posting I sent to the Zompist Bulletin Board
(www.spinnoff.com/zbb) as well:

<< [...] I haven't got so much time at the moment. That's also why I stopped
working at Ayeri's grammar for the moment. I don't feel like conlanging at
the moment and I'm still waiting for a reply from our bboard member Tayanrai
(What's the matter? Why don't you write back? I'm waiting for some weeks
already! Or hasn't that pm been sent?) concerning Tagalog and how it manages
mediopassive constructions like "The soup cooks.", and I still must work on
my verbs. [...] I'm also a bit at a loss what to do when triggering
(focussing by a marker causes stress on one part of a sentence) something
where I actually wouldn't stress anything.
Is there always a focus in every sentence in Tagalog or other trigger
languages? Without trigger, you'd have something pretty much like SVO. I
understood how triggers work, but I've still got difficulties at applying
it. E.g. "I read a book." What would you stress when the sentence is meant
absolutely neutral? Note: In Ayeri, different than in Tagalog, verbs may be
stressed as well. I guess I'll end up with the rule "Neutral sentences
without any stress do not require a triggered argument"...
Conlanging can be so difficult [...] >>

Yep. What to do with those sentences you'd put in the "neutral" category?
If you wonder why I post this here, too: I do not think there isn't anyone
at
the ZBB who can answer this, but over there, only a few persons know about
trigger languages. Tayanrai's parents are native speakers by the way, and he
is learning Tagalog.

Not related to the topic, what does "anadew(ism)" mean? I didn't find it in
the dictionary. And what does ObConlang mean?

Carsten Becker

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