Re: Tagalog & trigger idea: I'd like comments. :)

Roger Mills wrote at 2004-11-18 12:35:01 (-0500)
 > Ray Brown wrote:
 >
 > I agree totally; "trigger/target" seems to be adding a level of
 > terminology that is confusing and unncessary, and to my knowledge
 > those terms simply ARE NOT USED by Philippinists.

My researches into the matter online suggest that the "trigger"
terminology originates with, and certainly was popularised by Paul
Schachter.  As John has mentioned, it's used in Schachter's chapter on
Tagalog in Comrie's _The World's Major Languages_.  I've been unable
to discover whether it's used in Schachter and Otanes' _Tagalog
Reference Grammar_.

I'm limited to those papers I've been able to find online, but the
impression I get is that there simply is no strong consensus among
Philippinists on this matter.

See for example a footnote from this paper:
http://140.122.99.2/ntnuj/j46/j46.asp?appl=hs46-4.pdf
Note that there's a quote from Schachter on the choice of the term
"trigger".

 | Some linguists prefer to use different terms instead of _focus_.
 | Schachetr (1987:940), for example, prefers to use the term
 | _trigger_ because it 'reflects the fact that the semantic role of
 | the argument in question triggers the choice of the verbal affix.'
 | Wouk (1996:369) also chooses the same term because for her, it
 | seems to be a more neutral term.  Chang (1997:iv), on the other
 | hand, uses the term 'voice' because 'the so-called _focus_ in
 | Austronesian literature diverges significantly from common
 | focus... (and) should be identified as _voice_'.