Re: Trigger languages

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>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.
From what i gather from Tagalog ( a trigger language) words only exist as
verbs only when turned into verbs via the trigger affixes and the
processes used to verbalize them. Otherwise they are nouns, or simply
roots.

For instance, the word for "to eat" is "kumain", which comes from "kain"
food.

If i've got this right, of course :).

>
>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?
Well, the thing is, i was always told that there is no true tense in
Tagalog verbs. They only hint at a frame of temporal reference (something
that has occured, something that is ongoing, something that may happen). I
wish i knew the language better so i could explain it, but from what i can
tell, they don't seem to have true tense.

Of course that hasn't stopped me with Saalangal, because in Saalangal,
verbs DO have tense. As far as I know, this doesn't screw with how the
triggers work (unlike adding voice, which would).