On Deviant Case-Marking in Latin*
Laura A. Michaelis
University of California, Berkeley- Introduction
Exceptional case-marking in Latin has long been the bane of both students
and grammarians. It has resisted attempts at regularization by the latter
and, as a consequence, provided a formidable memorization task for the
former. Indeed, the presence of genitive subjects and dative, ablative, and
genitive objects — in defiance of the language's case-marking principles —
has been thought to define an anarchic realm of the grammar. Latinists,
including Mountford (1938), have resignedly provided long lists of those
verb forms which sanction deviant case-patterns. Admittedly, there is one
generalization about such forms that Latinists have long recognized: where
two-place predicates depart from the nominative-accusative pattern
(whereby subjects are coded by the former, objects by the latter), these
deviations are to be attributed to that verb's intransitive nature — unex
pected, given the number of verbal arguments. States Mountford (p. 5) "It
is important to realize that in some instances the nearest English equivalent
to a Latin intransitive verb is transitive. We feel that "I spare" is transitive;
the Romans felt that parco [which takes a dative object] was intransitive."
The traditional grammars have not, however, been able to provide any
explanation as to why, for example, parco should complete its meaning
with a dative object, while, e.g., the object of utor, "I use," requires abla
tive case and that of memini, "I remember," requires genitive. Nor have the
grammarians been able to account for the fact that, while dative objects are
relatively widespread, ablative and genitive objects are comparatively rare.
Such questions will be addressed here, within the framework of an account