Re: Trigger languages Re: Further language development Q's

Hey!

Yeah, it's true, trigger langs come up every now and then,
just like the discussions about Basque. It's both an
interesting because it's different from what most people
here are used to.

So, ... leafing through my notes and print-outs:
* Henrik Theiling explained things for me about this topic,
  too, though offlist and in German.
* According to my notes, there's been a thread called
  "Triggeriness", started by Andreas Johansson on December
  9th, 2003, 17:18 GMT.
* I asked about that stuff that day as
  well, the topic's name was "Q's abuot trigger again",
  seems that I misspelled "about" unintentionally.
* Another thread about trigger systems I read was started by
  Sarah Marie Parker-Allen on January 16, 2003 17:30:51 GMT,
  with the mentioned answer by Christophe on January 17,
  2003, 13:20:47 GMT.

If you want, I can send you those topics after September 12,
2003 as .EML files. Otherwise, search the archives, there's
more nifty explanation about that topic and also about
volitionality, though David Peterson explained the basics
very nicely. As for volitionality, I have downloaded a
paper by Daniel  Andréasson, called "Active
languages" (active.pdf; his BA thesis) from somewhere. I
haven't read that all yet because as all scientific papers,
it's quite dense, though you can read it quite fluently.
Volitionality has to do with trigger languages in that
sometimes, the only participant of an action is not the
doer, but rather the experiencer, like in "I fell down the
rocks (unintentionally)." -- It's a nice idea to think
about
something like that when creating a language. My conlang
Ayeri uses this for the comparison of adjectives.

<shameless plug>
My conlang Ayeri (see sig below) is thought to be a trigger
language as well, but I can't get the hang of
back-translating the grammar into English after I rewrote
large parts some weeks ago. The most recent version is thus
only available in German, but the vocabulary is fairly
up-to-date, and Ayeri->English as well.
</shameless plug>

Have fun with exploring this kind of system,
   Carsten

--
Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
  -> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri