Yet another two questions about trigger systems

[alice]

1. Is it correct to assert that a trigger system highlights a particular verbal argument within a clause, by moving that argument's case marker to the verb and replacing it with the trigger marker?

2. Does every clause have to have an argument marked as a trigger?

[Xwtek]

2. Unless your language is like English, I don't think so.

[Guitarplayer]

1. Is it correct to assert that a trigger system highlights a particular verbal argument within a clause, by moving that argument's case marker to the verb and replacing it with the trigger marker?

That would be the infamous "conlang trigger system" (that my conlang kind of does, too, I have to admit). For a description of the real thing, see Kroeger (1991/1993).

[Vardelm]

For a description of the real thing, see Kroeger (1991/1993).

Nice! Downloaded for future reading. I'm familiar with the mechanics of trigger systems, but this looks like it will fill in some details about subjecthood, etc. Thanks!

[Guitarplayer]

but this looks like it will fill in some details about subjecthood, etc. Thanks!

I hope it's useful. It was the most recent theoretical work on this I could find when I tried to finally sort out what my conlang actually does last year. Be aware that this is a manuscript version which contains bloopers in a few examples, and the list of references has been omitted for some reason. It should be reasonably easy to google those, though.

[Vardelm]

Should be fine, but since I'm back in school I can always try to look it up on research databases as well to find a later release. Which reminds me, I need to take time at some point to find as much linguistics stuff as I can and start downloading. Hmm. Sounds like linguistics porn.

[Vardelm]

1. Is it correct to assert that a trigger system highlights a particular verbal argument within a clause, by moving that argument's case marker to the verb and replacing it with the trigger marker?

No. As Guitarplayer stated, this is only found in conlangs. What makes this different from natlangs w/ Austronesian alignment is the idea of a "trigger marker" being placed on the noun. That doesn't happen in natlangs.

Instead, the verb is marked via affixes. To me, many of these seem more like derivational affixes than inflection, but doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. The affixes determine which noun in the sentence is (sort of) the subject or the focus/emphasis of the sentence. This issue is exactly what I will be reading the Kroeger article for, as I want to understand this just a little better.

The nouns of these languages then use their regular case marking. For some languages, the noun that is the subject/focus/emphasis of the sentence (and the one that the verb trigger is pointing to) will not have a case marker at all. Think of it as being in the nominative or absolutive case (which usually have no marking). For other languages, the noun that is the subject/focus/emphasis of the sentence will have the same case marker it would have if it were NOT the target of the verb trigger. I think Tagalog does this, but I'm not 100% sure. If you have a verb that has the agent trigger, the noun that is the agent of the sentence will still have the marker "ang".

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Here's another way to think of it. Languages often/usually use word order or case to determine which noun is the subject. In the Autronesian alignment it's the verb that tells you, through an affix, which noun is the "subject".

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If you haven't already, take a look at the Wikipedia article on Austronesian alignment. There's A LOT of examples there; far more than there used to be.

FWIW, my own conlang that uses this alignment will be similar to Tondano in that the "subject" will always be the 1st noun, followed by the verb, and then any oblique nouns after that. Thus, the "subject" will be indicated by BOTH word order and the trigger affix on the verb.

2. Does every clause have to have an argument marked as a trigger?

No, but that's because, as stated above, natlangs don't mark a noun with a "trigger marker".

On the other hand, from what I understand, the verb in these types of language always has one of the trigger affixes.

[Xwtek]

Yet another question: Is oblique trigger is identical to applicative + Indonesian style passive voice?

[Salmoneus]

1. Is it correct to assert that a trigger system highlights a particular verbal argument within a clause, by moving that argument's case marker to the verb and replacing it with the trigger marker?

No. As Guitarplayer stated, this is only found in conlangs. What makes this different from natlangs w/ Austronesian alignment is the idea of a "trigger marker" being placed on the noun. That doesn't happen in natlangs.

Huh!?!?!? How is this not exactly what happens in natlangs? The "subject" is marked as the "subject", either through word order or through inflection or particles (or often more than one of the above), while often "losing" the case markers that it would otherwise have, and the role of the "subject" is instead indicated on the verb.

Here's an example from wikipedia, in Kapampangan:

1) S‹um›ulat ya-ng poesia ing lalaki king pen king papil.
"The boy will write a poem with a pen on the paper."
Here, the "subject" is 'lalaki', 'boy', marked as such with the special marker, 'ing'. 'poesia', 'poem', is the object, and is marked with the accusative case marker 'ng' (which here is a clitic, attached to the previous word). 'king' is the oblique case marker.

2) I-sulat ne ning lalaki ing poesia king mestra.
"The poem will be written by the boy to the teacher."
Here, the "subject" is now 'poesia', which is marked with the special marker, 'ing'. The fact that this 'subject' is the patient is instead marked on the verb. Meanwhile, 'lalaki' is no longer the subject, but is still the agent, and so takes the ergative case marker, 'ning'.

[tangent: yes, it would be helpful if the case markers weren't "-ng", "ing", "ning" and "king", this is hardly maximally redundant...]

So: the subject or "trigger" if you prefer loses its role-based case marking (accusative or ergative), and is instead marked as the trigger (/subject/focus/whatever). The role of the trigger is then marked on the verb.

In Kapampangan, this extends to other roles, too, in the same way...

3) Sulat-anan ne ning lalaki ing mestro.
"The teacher will be written to by the boy".
Here, the boy is still the agent, so is still in the ergative case. But the teacher is now the subject. So the teacher loses their standard oblique case marker (king, as in 2 above), and instead takes the subject case marker, "ing". The role of the teacher is instead marked on the verb.

4) Pi-sulat-an ne-ng poesia ning lalaki ing blackboard.
"The blackboard will have a poem written on it by the boy"
Here, the boy is the agent, so is in the ergative case, with 'ning'. The poem is still a patient, so is still in the accusative case, with '-ng'. The blackboard WOULD be in the oblique case, with 'king', as with the obliques in 1 and 2... but because it is the subject, it loses that case marker and is instead given the subject marker, 'ing', as with the subjects in 1-3. The role of the blackboard (a location) is then instead marked on the verb.

and
5) Panyulat ne-ng poesia ning lalaki ing pen.
"The pen will be used by the boy to write the poem"
So, the pen, which has an oblique role, loses its oblique case marker and is instead given the subject marker; the role of the pen (an instrument) is then marked on the verb instead. Meanwhile, the agent still has the ergative case and the patient still has the accusative case.

[if you're wondering about the ne/ya alternation, this appears to be additional agreement. It seems that verbs are followed by particles showing the person of the subject, but ALSO the agent, if they're not the same. In 1, the subject is the agent, so there's only one agreement marker, 'ya'. In 2-5, the subject is not the agent, so there are two agreement markers, 'na' and 'ya', which merge into 'ne' to indicate a third person agent with a third person non-agent subject. This is very cool, but not essential to the alignment, and most languages with this alignment don't have this.]

So this appears to be exactly what alice is talking about (assuming that by "moving the case marker" they mean marking the role elsewhere, rather than literally requiring the role marking to be the same on the verb as it would have been on the noun). And I'd prefer "subject" to "trigger".

The same appears to be true of a big swathe of philippine and near-philippine languages. Wikipedia offers this very neat example for Ivatan, for example (I'll use {q} to indicate a phoneme lost through sandhi):
1) Mang-{q}amoqmo qo tao so motdeh no boday do vahay
2) Qamoqmo-hen no tao qo motdeh no boday do vahay.
3) Qipang-{q}amoqmo no tao so motdeh qo boday do vahay.
4) Pang-{q}amoqmo-an no tao so motdeh no boday qo vahay.
These all mean "The man is frightening a child with a snake in the house", but each places the focus on a different argument. As you see, you can go through the entire sentence and make any of the arguments into the subject, removing its role-based case-marker and giving it the subject marker instead. For each different subject, the role is then marked directly on the verb through one or more affixes.



Now, of course the nature of the marking can differ. In Ivatan and Kapampangan, it seems to be entirely by a particle, with the word order being unchanged. In other languages, it can be by the absence of a particle - the normal case marker is dropped, but no specific subject marker is used (or it may be optional). As you say, Tondano (very unusually) doesn't have a subject case particle at all, but instead marks the subject by dropping the normal case marker (/preposition, whatever you want to call it) and moving the subject to initial position. Other languages, like Tagalog and Malagasy, indicate the subject both through a particle AND through word order. But regardless of the exact nature of the marking, there quite clearly IS a "trigger marker" (subject case, focus particle, direct case, whatever you want to call it) placed on the noun (well, not normally "on" in a bound case morpheme sense, because these languages don't go in for nominal inflection much and prefer particles to bound morphemes but still, same difference). This is exactly what happens in natlangs.

[a slight complication: in some languages, the subject marker may change for different noun classes - eg one for animates, one for inanimates. But this is a separate issue.]

The affixes determine which noun in the sentence is (sort of) the subject

Which noun is the subject is determined by marking on the subject (and/or word order); there usually isn't even any agreement with the subject, so there's no way to know the subject except by the marking on the subject itself. [although there can be also be agreement too in some languages, as in Kapampangan above]. "Subject" is a syntactic role assigned in these languages by word order and/or exlicit marking to a particular noun. What the marking on the verb does is tell you what semantic role the subject plays in the sentence.

The nouns of these languages then use their regular case marking.

Yes - except for the subject, which loses its regular case marking. [although I wouldn't be shocked if some obliques ended up double-marked in some language somewhere, since the baroque oblique voices are sometimes later additions that may not behave exactly like the core voices]

For other languages, the noun that is the subject/focus/emphasis of the sentence will have the same case marker it would have if it were NOT the target of the verb trigger

Citation needed. The wikipedia page has examples from around ~30 languages, from Formosan and four other austronesian branches (plus Dinka), and so far as I can see this isn't true of ANY of these languages.

I think Tagalog does this, but I'm not 100% sure. If you have a verb that has the agent trigger, the noun that is the agent of the sentence will still have the marker "ang"

Yes. And if you have patient voice, the patient will have the marker "ang", and if you have locative voice the location will have the marker "ang", and so on. That's the point!
[Tagalog has an additional weirdness: the ergative and accusative cases have been merged. So there's one case for subjects, one for non-subject agents and non-subject patients, and one for everything else]




It seems to have become an article of faith in the conlanging community that there is such a thing as "conlang trigger alignment", and another such a thing as "austronesian alignment", and that these two things are completely, fundamentally different. But while everyone says this, everyone gives different explanations of what this fundamental difference is - and generally without coherent examples of EITHER proposed alignment. I don't doubt that many "austronesian" conlangs do indeed fail to perfectly emulate austronesian languages in this respect - partly because they intentionally do different things that just happen not to crop up in austronesian (like bound case morphemes instead of particles), and partly because in the depths of the languages there will no doubt be details where conlangers have naively imported native language assumptions. But fundamentally, I don't see the great chasm between the two systems that we're always told there is.


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That said, if someone particularly wants to emulate Austronesian, there are maybe some things that are worth noting:

- Austronesian tends to use particles, rather than bound morphemes, to mark case. Of course, there's nothing logically that demands this.

- Austronesian case markers (on the nouns) and voice markers (on the verbs) are not usually related in form. That is, it's not usually just that the case marker has "moved" onto the verb. Of course, there's no reason a conlang can't do this, either due to etymology (eg deriving the system from applicatives, taken from still-extant prepositions) or simply due to coincidence.

- In known Earth languages, the number of symmetric voices can be 1 (almost all languages), 2 (Indonesian voice systems), 3 (a few Philippine voice systems), 4 (most Philippine voice systems, and probably the original Austronesian system), 5 or 6 (some Philippine voice systems). No language is known to have more than 6 symmetric voices, so a "conlang trigger system" that allows any of dozens of different types of oblique to each have their own voice would indeed be "unrealistic" in the strict sense. However, I liken this to morphological case - if all we had to go on was the languages of Africa (and western europe minus basque, and the pacific, and southeast asia, and...) we might think that morphological case was very rare, and that having more than six cases in one language was "unrealistic". Of course, it isn't, because we have Hungarian, and the Caucasus. But given that the number of languages with more than 1 symmetric case is already very small, relatively speaking, we can't really say what is and isn't plausible in this regard. In the same way, you could easily think that the maximum number of possessive classifiers was two, or three, or maybe four, if we didn't have Micronesian... but oh, there's Iaai, and it turns out that you can have literally dozens of the damn things.

- Austronesian tends not to have a lot of cases, often having single 'oblique' markers that are used for a very wide range of roles.