Re: Verbal system in Itakian

At 02:20 02/03/00 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Interesting Christophe! Your system seems very complex (to this casual
>observer).
>
I think it's quite straightforward, but its implementation is complex, yes
:) .

>For me, the name destination implies that the action happens on or at
>something. It seems similar  (by name alone it seems) to the directional
>trigger I have in Saalangal, which means the action happens on or at
>something (differentiated from the locative trigger, where the action
>happens in a place):
>
>Kakálawum taw yu sabés. - He wrote on/at the book. (yu is the trigger
>marker)
>
>It doesn't really have to do strictly with a spatial meaning (like "He
>threw the ball at (towards) her."). It just means the agent is directing
>an action at/to the patient (I hope I have those terms correct!).
>Generally the trigger eliminates the use of to/at/on/in etc.
>
Yes, I forgot to add that the destination and source trigger have other
uses than 'experiencer-experiencee'. What I wanted to mean is that they
never have a spatial meaning. So, to take your own examples, "He threw the
ball at her" would never use a destination trigger, while "He wrote on the
book" could well use one (or the patient trigger, depending on whether the
book is actually written by the person, or if he simply writes notes on a
book he studies. in the first case, the book is really modified - patient
trigger - whereas on the other case, the modification is much less
important, and not vital nor lethal to the book - destination trigger - :)) ).

>I'm not sure if I have this down well or not, but the source trigger would
>imply to me that the action is coming from something. Do I have it down,
>or have I just messed up and totally misunderstood everything you have
>written? =)
>
You're right. "Source" means that the action "comes from something", but in
a rather metaphoric way (that's what I wanted to mean: destination and
source are rather metaphoric names, they mustn't be taken for their spatial
meaning). When you say "I look at the book", the book can be considered
source of my looking (same for "I read the book": the book is not modified
by the action, it's simply the source of the things read). I think that's
quite an interesting trigger :) .

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)