Prepositions governing nominative

Quoting Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
> > > So, does this mean that it be unnatural to have adpositions
> > > govern accusative?
> >
> >Generally speaking, no, but it really depends on the number
> >of distinct cases in the language and what kinds of other uses they
> >might have and how they uses interact with one another.  Is the
> >accusative morphologically marked by <null>, while the nominative
> >takes some special ending?  Such a system is not unheard of, though
> >it is far rarer than special marking for the accusative and no
> > marking for the nominative.
>
> Well, Kalini have Semitoid base system, where the second vowel of a
> noun
> showing case:
>
> kazal "woman (ACC)"
> kazul "woman (NOM)"
> kazil "woman's" (pronounced [kaZil])
>
> So arguably the nominative is no less or more marked than the
> accusative, but hitherto, the nominative is only used for subjects
> and the genitive for possession/association.
But that's not really the same, you see. There are lots of
languages that mark both the nom and acc cases.  Your system,
as above, is quite natural. (Well, as natural as Semitoid
systems can be.)

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>

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