Re: Trigger language?

En réponse à Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>:

>
> - Causative - the focus would be on the one who caused the action.
>
> A sample sentence could be translated as "he caused the item to
> break",
>
> - Unintentional - the focus would be on the result of the action with
> the
> action being unintentional.
>
> A sample sentence may be translated as: "He didn't mean to break it".
> With
> this one i'm wondering if the agent or patient should be the focus.
>
> Any ideas as to who each of these focuses should best focus on, or can
> i
> leave it up to myself to decide?
>
Well, you've rung at the right door! My Itakian is the perfect answer for
you!! ;))) Indeed, Itakian has two different kinds of causatives, but in both
cases it doesn't really have a special way to mark them ;)) . What is called
the proper "causative" is what you call the "unintentional". It is marked
simply by having a cause in the sentence, as complement or as trigger (in
Itakian, quite a few function can become triggers. They are: actor, patient,
source, destination, goal, cause, dative, genitive, beneficiary, instrument,
manner, place, time. Note that "source" and "destination" are to be taken
metaphorically - they correspond rather to "experiencee and "experiencer" - and
that "genitive" doesn't mark possession but the contrary of the dative, i.e.
what or who you take something from). As for the factitive, which is what you
call "causative", it is simply rendered using a complement with the preposition
_ca'ro/_, which corresponds then to the person who is provoking the action. It
cannot become a trigger, but not by principle (all triggers correspond to a non-
trigger form using a preposition, but prepositional complements have many more
functions than only the triggerisable ones), only because it's just not the
case (although there may be some dialects of Itakian which allow more functions
to become triggers).

>
> If Tagalog had this, it would be easy, but it doesnt and this is how
> i'm
> making saalangal a bit different and more interesting. Rethinking
> both,
> these could be related triggers, The first being an intentional
> action,
> and the second of course being unintentional.
>
As you see, both are indeed seen as related in Itakian, it's just that one can
become trigger while the other cannot, for purely grammatical reasons rather
than semantic ones. If you want to make them related, then I'd think it's best
to always put the focus on the one who provoked the action (whether
intentionally or not).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.