Re: nominative/accusative

Quoting Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>:

> Since i am bored, and want to work on another conlang, i decided to try
> one with cases. Now, i'd like to do it nominative/accusative style, but
> i'm not sure how it works with both transitive and intransitive sentences.
> Also, how are subordinate clauses, and complex sentences handled?
It's going to work very much like English ...

Let's forget adpositional stuff to begin with. Then:

In intransitive sentences, the subject goes in the nominative. Simply

In monotransitive sentences, the subject goes in the nominative, the object in
the accusative.

In ditransitive sentences, the subject goes in the nominative, the direct
object in the accusative, and the indirect object in the dative (that's what
you'd expect from the case name, at any rate).

Of course, you may want to add some complication, like verbs which only object
goes in the dative (this is no more exotic than that German does it), but the
above is the basic system of a well behaved accusative language with suffixed
case markers.

As for adpositions, they would be expected to govern one or more non-
nominative case*; all could take the same, each could take a different one, or
you could have the same take different cases with subtle changes of meaning
(or not so subtle - cf German where _in_ means 'in' or 'into depending on the
noun is in dative or accusative).

* I violate this big time in my Klaishic languages, where prepositions govern
nominatives.

> And, for the cases that mark roles other than nominative/accusative, how
> do they work within the sentence?
Well, the dative as said would be expected to mark indirect objects.

The other cases essentially replace adposition+noun phrases - like replacing
_of the king_ with _the king's_ in English, essentially. And as mentioned, you
could have them being governed by adpositions, too.

Hope that was of some help.

                                                        Andreas