Language universal?

Musing on a new thread here . . .

A while ago, someone mentioned that prepositions do not ever govern the
nominative case in languages that mark case.  Unfortunately, my conlang
Yivríndil does just that, and so I says to myself, "This won't do.  I
don't mind breaking a language universal every now and then, since they
all have *some* exceptions, but this one was claimed to have *no*
exceptions!  And I don't want to be the only exception out there, since I
strive for naturalness in my lang."  So I did a little syntactic
slight-of-hand and decided that prepositions govern the accusative case,
which is cheating since *the accusative case is never marked*.  There was
an accusative ending that survived in pronouns until a few hundred years
ago (con-timeline), but it's fallen out of use.

Is this cheating?  And can anybody come up with a natlang counterexample
to this language universal?  If not, I claim first dibs on the
self-referential Jesse's Language Universal: "All language universals have
exceptions."

:)

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_
Conlanger code: CLI> l%p+++ cS:R:N:H a++ y n18d:6 X+++ A-- E-- L-- N2.5
Idmp k++ ia-- p+ m++ o+++ P d++ b++ Yivríndil