Re: Trigger languages

Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
> to be several papers available in pdf); I've never seen it but doubt
> strongly they would have used the "trigger" term.  That term seems to
> have arisen relatively recently (IIRC in one of our earlier discussion
> of this, someone cited a(the) first or at least early use of it), and
> AFAIK hasn't been widely accepted in the field.
Thanks - it's been my impression also that the term "trigger" (in this
usage) is (a) relatively recent, and (b) that it hasn't been widely
accepted in the field.

[snip]
>
> The idea of analyzing the various Formosan and Philippine verb systems
> with "passives" seems also to have fallen out of favor;
passives _and_ applicatives, I think would be needed

> most of what
> I've read calls them "focus" systems-- active voice now --> agent
> focus;  passive now --> patient focus; dative/benefactive passive -->
> dat./ben. focus; etc. etc. Also, instrumental focus and location focus--
> there may be 1 or 2 more, but that's about it.
Yep - the feature sometimes called 'trigger'*, has also been called
'subject', 'topic' or 'focus' by others. This has not helped. But your
observation is interesting in that it has seemed to me that the _conlang
'trigger' system_ as given on
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/Advanced/Grammar/Trigger
and
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Grammar/Trigger
is, in fact, an interesting conlang slant on giving focus to a
particular element in the sentence

> RB:
> But at some stage, analyses using 'trigger' terminology did occur.
> However, from what I have been able to gather, it would seem that not
> all 'trigger' explanations were the same. My feeling is the Conlang
> Trigger Languages developed from an attempt to make sense of these
> explanations.
>
> RM: That's quite likely.
*I have certainly seen the term 'trigger' used to denote the affix
attached to the verb. This to me seems quite a bizarre usage.

--
Ray
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