Re: Again trigger & stuff

Quoting Carsten Becker <post@...>:

> << 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. >>
> [snip]
We've been told there are grammatical Tagalog sentences without a trigger, but
my understanding is you normally always have one. I doubt that truly "neutral"
sentences are rare in practice. Depends, of course, a bit of what qualifies an
NP for triggerhood; in Tagalog, if I've got it right, it's a combination of
emphasis and theme-hood.

                                                        Andreas