Re: THEORY: "Quirky" Case -- "Quirky" Subjects and "Quirky" Objects

Thank you, David, Markus, and Henrik.

I forgot to add my "signature" question about Ditransitives;

3a) In ditransitive sentences, how many, and which, grammatical cases
can be assigned to each of the core arguments --
grammatical/syntactic subject, grammatical/syntactic direct object,
grammatical/syntactic indirect object?
3b) For each of the core arguments, which language holds the record
for most grammatical cases assignable to that grammatical/syntactic
role? And what is that record number?

But in light of David's and Markus's answers, unless they
misunderstood my question or are just wrong, it looks like the answer
is going to be;
1a) Any grammatical case can be assigned to the grammatical/syntactic
subject.
1b) Probably Estonian or Finnish or Hungarian or Turkish, or
whichever language has the most grammatical cases.
2a) Any grammatical case can be assigned to the grammatical/syntactic
direct object.
2b) Probably the same answer as 1b.
3a) Any grammatical case can be assigned to the grammatical/syntactic
indirect object.
3b) Probably the same answer as 1b or 2b.

(I kind of hope those aren't the answers;
but I'm afraid David and Markus and Henrik /did/ understand my
questions correctly, so ... oh, well ...)

Sticking to languages with Accusative/Nominative,
Indirective/Directive alignment:
I have not seen any grammatical cases in transitive or ditransitive
grammatical/syntactic Subjects, other than Nominative, Dative, and
Accusative;
and I have not seen any grammatical cases in transitive Objects or
ditransitive grammatical/syntactic Direct Objects other than
Accusative, Dative, Nominative, Genitive (sometimes Partitive or
Ablative), Instrumental (sometimes Comitative), and Locative
(sometimes Ablative or Comitative).  (Since not all languages
distinguish between every pair of the above cases, sometimes a
nominal in one case in one language, is called by a different case-
name in a different language, although it is in essence the same
case.)

David, you said Latin had case-governing verbs for each case except
Vocative, such that the verb in question requires its subject to be
in that case.
Is there a Transitive case-governing verb for each Subject case?

Can anyone provide me with an example of any language which allows/
(or sometimes requires) each morphological case to be assigned to the
grammatical/syntactic Subject of a Transitive verb?

Similar question for grammatical/syntactic Direct Object;
and for grammatical/syntactic Indirect Object.

Are David and Markus saying that in "Quirky Case" languages, the
grammatical/morphological case assigned to any core-argument nominal,
is wholly semantically determined (by the lexical verb among other
information), not ever just a function of the grammatical/syntactic
role it has as a core-argument?

Incidentally, Markus; it was your conlang that inspired this question.

Thanks,

Tom H.C. in MI

Replies