Re: Nouns with arguments, verbs without arguments

I've just recently investigated this issue in my current conlang (Drychite)
and have found that nouns with required arguments appear in the field of
numerals. When used in a noun phrase, they become the head of the phrase
and are inflected for the appropriate noun case.

Numerals: _1_ (1[1]), _vuag^g^i_ (2), _tilgei_ (3). Grammatically, (1) is
singular, (2) is dual and (3) is plural. Therefore the finite verb agrees
with the numeral, since it has become head. All numerals higher than (3)
are also plural.

There are 4 noun cases: nominative, accusative, genitive and locative
(adverbial) and their usage is not restricted to their case-name, which was
merely chosen for convenience.

Numerals take _one_ or more nouns or nominalized arguments, which should
appear in the case the specific numeral governs (also depends on the
function of the entire noun phrase).

The table below makes the most sense in a mono-width font:

Num.    NP=subject      NP=object       NP=oblique/adverbial
1       NOM             GEN             ACC }
2       GEN             GEN             ACC } haven't decided yet ;)
3-*     ACC             ACC             GEN }

Examples:

(1) _1_ anste           hiegud.
     one-nom.sg man-nom.sg       sit-3sg
     "One man sits down."
(2) Vuag^g^i    ansteej         hiegguu.
     two-nom.dl man-gen.dl       sit-3dl
     "Two men sit down."

In (2) "man" appears in the genitive dual case, as required by the numeral
vuag^g^i if the noun phrase is subject. Though a genitive construction is
common for numerals "two of men" in some languages, the genitive in (2) is
used outside of this concept. For numerals higher than 3 (but the word for
3 _tilgei_ is used in this example) the accusative case appears instead:

(3) Tilgei              ansttet         hiegee.
     three-nom.pl        man-acc.pl      sit-3pl
     "Three men sit down."

Now for transitives:

(4) Suu beiktud vuag^g^ie    ansteej    tilgean      puavvaat    deastte.
     he:nom.sg   hit-3sg two-acc.dl   man-gen.dl three-loc.pl rock-gen.pl ~with
     "He hits two men with three rocks."

In (4) you can see some head numerals inflected for cases other than
nominative. The morphological form of the numerals is singular, even though
_vuag^g^ie_ is grammatically dual and _tilgean_ is plural. Anyway, the end
line is these numerals can't appear on their own. I can't pat _vuag^g^ie_
(the two of them).

[1] No lexicon entry exists yet for the numeral "1", unfortunately. Perhaps
there won't be. ;)
[2] g^ = g-caron /dZ/

vaksje.
http://www.claygirl.org:8080/~vaxje/
(unfortunately does not yet contain conlang stuff ;) <-- indeed, perhaps I
should work on it?