Re: Triggeriness ...

Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> writes:
>I don't say they must be; it's just that to me, insisting they're
>something
>else seems to be needlessly complicating things.
I think equating them to cases only confuses newbies. Had my Tagalog
instructor, or the books i have insisted Tagalog triggers were like
accusative/ergative/nominative cases, i'd have gotten very confused.

I say describe them on their own terms, that triggers *simply* emphasize
the role of a noun or pronoun in the sentence, be it that it's the actor,
the object, the location, who it's done for, where it's done.

How does that "needlessly complicate" things?
>
>
>An English verb (normally) requires a nominative argument; one noun is
>indicated to be such syntactically. A Tagalog verb, I'm given to
>understand,
>requires a trigger; one noun is marked to be such by an adposition. It's
>highly unclear to me why the one should be a case of case(!) and the
>other not.
Actually, in Tagalog vebs do not always require a trigger:

Gusto mo ng isda? - You like fish? Neither the pronoun nor the noun are
triggered.

Don't case languages require cases on verbs? If so, where does the above
sentence fit?

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