Trigger languages

>From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
>
>On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 06:16:51AM +0000, Mat McVeagh wrote:
> > >From: Amanda Babcock <langs@...>
> > > I started a totally noun-based trigger language
> > >last year;
> >
> > OK what is a trigger language? H.S. Teoh also mentioned that phrase.
>[snip]
>
>Here's an introduction to trigger languages, courtesy of Pablo Flores,
>one of our list members:
>
>http://www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/lng/how/how_wordclasses.html
>
>(Scroll down to the bottom of the page, the last section talks about
>trigger languages.)
>
>
>T
Amazing! I would never have thought of it myself. I am going to have to
think about this.

Two things occur straight away. 1) In a way, having the trigger morpheme on
the noun and the affix on the verb is like a 'deferred' case. That the case
is still applicable to the noun, it's just that the marker for what the case
is is not on the noun itself. It's like having a flag, which you have been
told to associate with a certain meaning. Apply the meaning where you see
the flag. (And something about this is it's technically resundant when you
can put the case marker directly on the noun.)

2) In what way does the verb become nominalised? Surely something is only of
the same part of speech / word class as another if it has the same sort of
morphology and syntax. Thus, to be considered nouns trigger-language verbs
would have to be structured like nouns and relate to other words in the
sentence like nouns. Are these verbs like that in these languages? If not,
if they have their own, different morphology and syntax, maybe they're...
verbs.

They might not have voice, but do they have tenses? Can these verbs that
have the affix added be made to refer to either the present or past, for
instance?

Mat


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