ON DEVIANT CASE-MARKING IN LATIN 363absent. Quite a few, if not all, of the verbs which are registered in our
grammars as allowing different case frames are of this type. As a conse
quence, ostensible case-alternation of this type cannot be taken as an argu
ment that there must be a difference in meaning.
In other words, the dative/accusative opposition among such two-place
predicates as consulo cannot be used to support the animacy division, as no
such opposition exists. Additionally, even among three-place predicates, it
seems that there are exceptions to the animacy division. The verb circumdo
("I surround"), which sanctions the valence alternation discussed above,
contains in its "unmarked" case-frame a dative locative-argument whose
referent is rarely animate, as one can discover through a brief survey of the
illustrative sentences given for this entry in the Oxford Latin Dictionary.
Further, Pinkster's analysis simply ignores the class of verbs sanctioning
genitive theme-arguments, both causative and stative, and the evident free-
variation between genitive and ablative coding of theme arguments among
removal verbs. And although he recognizes (p. 173) that there is "a parallel
behavior of certain two-place verbs with respect to the particular case-form
of their second argument and certain three-place verbs with related mean
ing," (he gives the pair careo "I lack"/privo "I deprive" as an example), he
does not examine the thematic roles with which the ablative argument is
linked in the frames associated with both stative and causative. He hence
fails to recognize that this parallelism between statives and causatives con
sists in the consistent marking of the theme argument (as ablative or geni
tive). Finally, and perhaps most problematically, as he does not recognize
"quirky" verbs as intransitive, he has no means by which to explain the
strong correlation between the lack of an accusative object and the imper
sonal passive. This correlation he attempts to analyze away by adducing iso
lated instances in which the presence of accusative object does not impli
cate a personal passive. He apparently fails to see that the lack of an
accusative object always implies an impersonal passive.
3.2 Pinkster (to appear)Recognizing the difficulties, enumerated in the previous section, of treating
quirky case-patterns as other than idiomatic features of the verbs bearing
them, Pinkster apparently abandons his earlier synchronic semantically
based explanation for quirky case-patterns and asserts two historical
sources for non-accusative objects. The first he refers to as "differential