middles

Ha!  After a few minutes looking, I managed to find an example of
a natlang which consistently assigns dative case to the subjects of
verbs of perception and emotion.  The language is Guaymi, spoken in
Costa Rica and Panama (it belongs to the Chibchan family, not the Carib
family, so I was wrong on that score).  Anyway, here are some examples,
lifted from Thomas Payne's "Describing Morphosyntax", a book which has
gotten a lot of good press on CONLANG recently:

        Davi-e     Dori   gare
        David-DAT  Doris  know-Pres
        "David knows Doris"

        Toma-e      Dori   tyry
        Thomas-DAT  Doris  remember-Pres
        "Thomas remembers Doris"

        Ti-e     ru        hatu-aba
        1sg-DAT  airplane  see-Past
        "I saw the airplane"

        Ti-e     tymEna  nib-i
        1sg-DAT  thirst  feel-Pres
        "I feel thirst, I'm thirsty"

For the record, each of these predicates ("know", "remember", "see",
"be thirsty") takes a dative case subject in Tokana as well.  And
I didn't even know there *was* such a language as Guaymi...

Matt.