Re: THEORY: accusativity marking [was Re: Viko Notes Question]

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> The funny thing in
> Classical Arabic is that with some constructions the subject is in the
> accusative and the object in the nominative!!!
You don't even have to go outside of PIE.  Spanish has things like "A
Juan le gustan los perros" (Juan likes dogs), where "los perros" is the
gramatical subject, and "A Juan" the gramatical (indirect) object.  And
yet, strangely enough, the word order is as if _Juan_ were the subject
and _Los perros_ the object!  That, to me, has always seemed the
strangest part of that construction.  If it were *"Los perros le gustan
a Juan" it wouldn't be that odd, but the conflict between order and
"case" is bizarre.  :-)

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