Re: Trigger languages

On Mar 18, 2008, at 6:02 AM, R A Brown wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 8:01 PM, Jim Henry
>> <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 7:44 PM, Campbell Nilsen
>>> <cactus95@...> wrote:
>>>  > Could anybody explain to me how trigger languages work? I
>>> don't understand them.
>>>
>>>  There's an explaination, mostly by Carsten [B]ecker,
>>>  in the Conlang Wikibook:
>>>
>>>  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/Advanced/Grammar/Trigger
>> but see also David J. Peterson's comments on the Talk page:
>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Grammar/Trigger
>
> Quite so - I agree whole-heartedly with David's opening sentence
> "Not meaning to rock the boat, but trigger systems, as they're
> explained here, don't actually exist in natural languages." Indeed,
> I am in complete agreement with the whole of David's comments on
> that page.
>
> So it depends on whether Campbell was asking (a) 'Could anybody
> explain to me how trigger [conlangs] languages work?' or (b) 'Could
> anybody explain to me how trigger [natlangs] languages work?'
>
> If (a) is intended, read David's comments from "The notion of the
> 'trigger' language, then, is something exclusive to conlangs"
> onwards; also take a look at Carsten's Ayeri conlang.
> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/conlang/ayeri/
>
> If (b) is intended then IMO no such animal exists.
So, is it the case that the *terms* "trigger language" and "trigger
system" are not used in descriptions of natlangs? Or they are used,
but describe something different from the conlang concept of a
trigger language?

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