Talk:Austronesian alignment

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Contents 1 trigger system? 2 needs rewriting 3 Trigger 4 Focus & topic 5 comment from article

[edit] trigger system?

Is this the same thing as a trigger system? — Gwalla | Talk 04:40, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Gwalla. Kwamikagami wrote this. I have been planning for a long long time to go over it. I think I remember some sources calling the system "trigger".. I can dig up the references. All the articles I've read have used the term "Philippine-type focus system," but that term seems to be headed toward disfavor too, in favor of something using the term "voice." But that trigger system article is kinda imprecise...

--Ling.Nut 08:18, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I think trigger is an outdated term, still used by conlangers. Though I need to check sources some more, the terminology used in this article jibes with what I remember from linguistic literature. --Chris S. 03:11, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] needs rewriting

I've been thinking for a long time this page needs a top-down rewrite. Maybe after this semester ends.--Ling.Nut 13:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trigger

I did the merge from Trigger system.

I have linguistic education, but i am not an expert in this kind of languages, so please improve it. Thanks. --Amir E. Aharoni 20:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Focus & topic

Do we not have articles on these? This isn't really the place to cover basic issues of topic & focus, which are much broader than the scope of this topic. kwami 23:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'm taking it out and adding links to topic & focus. Also taking out the stuff on trigger languages, as it's just saying the same thing with different terms, which will be very confusing to our readers. kwami 07:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the info on trigger was just merged into this article and it should be discussed before splitting it off again. Pairadox 07:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

But it didn't say anything different than what we already have. With the differences in terminology, it wasn't obvious we were repeating ourselves. (Sorry, I'm just getting back online, so I haven't been keeping up with recent changes.) kwami 09:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem. This edit summary and your inclusion of a redlink to Trigger (linguistics) made me think you might be considering creating that article with the info you removed. Pairadox 09:31, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Good you caught me, actually. I was thinking along those lines, thinking it would need to be a summary of how the term is used. I'll take out the dead link. kwami 16:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] comment from article

Anon. editor added comment in article which was bot-reverted as vandalism:

[In Tagalog] the translation for BINASA must have "THE book" as object and the semantic requires the book to be completely read (whereas BUMASA NG AKLAT only implies indef book or partial reading)

Sorry, but this is all just not true. You are mixing up transitivity (valency of verb) and active/passive voice. To counter your claim, note that english active verbs are seen as both transitive and intransitive, and the object may be definite or indefinite. However passive verbs must be transitive (you claim they are all intransitive!) Since the english passive has both object (promoted to subject) and agent. Philippine languages to not act at all as you claim "performing functions similar to active and passive." philippine (so-called) actor voice (focus) must have an indefinite/partitive object, whereas all other voices have a fully affected patient/object. "actor voice" is only semantically intransitive, and contrasts syntactically and in terms of affectedness of patient with the fully transitive voices. User:203.177.180.43 04:26, 2008 January 17

I was thinking of adding in the first comment, but don't know if the difference is due to the trigger, or implied by the tense. (Past tense tends to be more transitive than present.)

As for the second point, I think we're talking at cross purposes, with different definitions of transitivity. The difference between active and passive is very often one of definiteness or affectedness of the object, so it looks like we may agree here.

If in Tagalog the difference truly is one of affectedness (and this isn't just a strong tendency, as in English), we should definitely include that. However, all the debate over what's going on with Philippine languages leads me to suspect it isn't so simple. Anyway, if it is affectedness, that would imply that the patient trigger/voice is more transitive than the agent trigger/voice. kwami (talk) 12:23, 17 January 2008 (UTC)