Re: Cases, again

On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 08:25:49PM -0600, Herman Miller wrote:
> Are there really no languages with prepositions governing the
> nominative?
Does it have to be a natlang?  Prepositions generally govern the
nominative in Esperanto, although with prepositions of location the
accusative can be used to convey the idea of motion into:

Li saltis en la tabelo.         He jumped (while he was) on the table.
Li saltis en la tabelon.        He jumped onto the table.

In Spanish, which like English has lost case distinctions outside of the
pronouns, prepositions govern a case whose name I don't know.  It is
identical in form to the nominative in most persons, but the first and
second person singular indicate that it's something else.  The former is
"mi", which is neither the nominative ("yo") nor the accusative/dative
("me").  It is identical in form to the genitive/possessive, but that's
not the case for the second-person singular "ti", which again is neither
the nominative ("tú"), the accusative/dative ("te"), nor the
genitive/possessive ("tu").

-Mark