A note on oblique case 123
b. The preposition sa ‘with’ governs instrumental:
Dolazim sa (mojom) Miki.
come.1sg w it h my.inst Miki
‘I am coming with my Miki.’
c. The preposition o ‘about’ governs locative case:
Razgovarali smo o (mojoj) Miki.
talk.ptcp.pl aux.1pl ab out my.loc Miki
‘We talked about (my) Miki.’
(12) a. prema demonstrantima
towards demonstrator.pl.dat
‘towards (the) demonstrators’
b. prema nekoliko/puno demonstranata
towards several/a lot demonstrator.pl.gen
‘towards several demonstrators’
Crucially, recall that the occurrence of an indeclinable name or quantifier in a V-gov-
erned or N-governed oblique case environment results in ungrammaticality, unless
some element in the phrase overtly realizes the particular oblique case. This is shown
for names in dative and instrumental case position in (7) and (8) above. In contrast,
the same indeclinable nominals turn out to be uniformly acceptable when appear-
ing in a P-governed oblique case environment, as illustrated in (11) and (12). Thus it
seems that no case realization requirement holds for P-governed oblique cases. The
limitation of the realization requirement to oblique cases assigned specifically by V or
N is explicitly stipulated by W&Z’s Case Realization Condition (see (9) above). So the
question arising is: How can we make sense of this prima facie mysterious asymmetry
in the relevance of the case realization requirement between oblique case governing V
and N versus oblique case governing P?
A potential account for this systematic split is proposed in Franks (1995). His pro-
posal is based on the claim that while V and N are categories that can assign oblique
case, P in fact is not a case assigner but is itself an overt marker, i.e. merely a morpho-
logical realization, of oblique case that is always assigned by the former lexical heads.
Thus, for instance the preposition sa ‘with’ is taken to be an instrumental case marker
(Franks 1995; Leko 1987). This view is based on cases such as sa in examples like (13a)
vs. (13b), where it is claimed to be inserted before a QNP as a special strategy to pro-
vide overt realization for instrumental case assigned by the verb (vlada ‘rules’) when
the complement – as the quantifier in (13b) – is indeclinable (from Franks 1995: 98).
(13) a. Predsjednik vlada zemljom.
president rules country.inst
‘The president rules the country.’.
b. Predsjednik vlada sa nekoliko zemalja.
president rules with several countries.gen
‘The president rules several countries.’