Re: Trigger language?

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 04:11:18PM -0500, Josh Roth wrote:
[snip]
> This doesn't seem quite right. I see trigger systems as not necessarily
> an alternative to accusative, ergative, tripartite, etc. marking, but
> merely a way of marking roles. An noun's role can be marked on the noun
> itself, on the article (German???), on the verb (langs with trigger
> systems), by word order, etc - this is separate from the issue of which
> semantic/pragmatic roles are grouped together or separated.
I'm not sure I agree with this description of trigger systems. You have to
keep in mind that the noun chosen as trigger can be *any* of agent,
patient, etc., only this chosen noun is marked differently from others.
There is no "subject" role which always get picked as trigger; the point
is that the chosen noun can be in *any* of these roles, yet it is treated
differently from the others. So there must be some special property
associated with that chosen noun---you can call it trigger, or focus, or
what-have-you. But if we were to follow your analysis, we'd have to either
mark the role of every noun in the sentence on the verb, or always mark
nouns of the same role (say, agent) on the verb, which isn't what trigger
systems do.

> Kar Marinam is trigger, but also split-S. I can also envision
> fully-fledged ergative, accusative, etc. languages that happen to have
> trigger systems.
I'd be curious to find out how you can have an accusative trigger
language.

[snip]
> My last point: you said that *all* non-trigger items are marked equally in
> trigger languages. But in Tagalog, directions and beneficiaries are always
> marked distinctly. Here are a couple of sentences from the book:
[snip]

I think he meant that non-trigger nouns have their roles marked on
themselves, whereas the trigger noun has its role "moved" onto the verb.
Hence, the non-trigger nouns are on the "same level" whereas the trigger
is on a different level.


T

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