CHAT: Prepositions governing nominative,(X)... case [was Re: CHAT: Back on the list; Anti-conlangingbigots]

How much sense does it make to have the nominative and accusative
marked, but the genetive unmarked?
i.e., Eviendadhail:
idan - man NOM
edan - man ACC
dan - man gen

-M

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> >
> >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.
>
>                                              Andreas
>
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