Re: Triggeriness ...

Staving John Cowan:
>Roger Mills scripsit:
>
> > ObConlang!! Old Kash could treat 'go' and 'come' sort-of transitively, at
> > least by putting the destination in the accusative case
>
>In Mandarin, qu4 'go' is transitive, which is said to be a borrowing from
>Southern Sinitic, so perhaps there are other weird transitive verbs
>there.
In Magikimnaz, the accusative has the secondary sense of perlative (motion
through or via). This came about the following way.

In Khangaþyagon, subject and object are distinguished by word order. As
word order became more flexible in Magikimnaz, an accusative morpheme was
needed. The topic suffix -ku was co-opted as an accusative, and the
topic-comment structure, used for reported speech and similar, became
accusative-infinitive. Meanwhile, consonant clusters in Magikimnaz began to
assimilate by voice, so the perlative suffix -gu became indistinguishable
from -ku. Normally, the two senses could be told apart by context, but when
a cowardly soldier refused an order to explore a tunnel, and the Tæbmag
placed his had to the sword and said "I will make you go through the
tunnel," the soldier promptly decided he felt a lot braver.

Pete