OF NOMINATIVES AND DATIVES 479language, for presentation of NPs as arguments to different classes of pred
icates, what we might term the manner of propositional regimentation of
argument-predicate relationships that seems to be fixed and comparable
across systems, elaborated in one language with respect to another, but fun
damentally consistent, and marked by case-formations. Thus, there is
direct, two-place fully transitive coding, in which there is an Agent and a
Patient, whatever else the clause includes, vs. inverse, two-place fully trans
itive (and also partially transitive) coding, in which there is an Experiencer
and Patient, whatever else the clause includes. In many Indo-European
type languages, the first has a Nominative: Accusative rection in plain form,
while the second has a Dative:Nominative rection in plain form, the so-
called "factitive" and similar "causative" verbs coding predicates of the first
sort in a clear way, and the verbs of "involuntary perception" and "cog
nition" coding predicates of the second sort in a clear way. Some languages
assimilate the plain inflectional forms of the second possibility to those of
the first, though in many syntactic relationships their distinctness re-
emerges. Three-place codings of various sorts are common, for example the
transitive sort of give verbs, the variously partially-to-fully transitive "be-
nefactive" predications, "malefactive" predications, and so forth, involving
something as adjunct that generally surfaces with a Dative case-marking.
"Possessive" relationships are coded with direct or inverse regimentation,
generally intransitive and highly subject to nominalization, so that surface
case-markings are in general Nominative (or Absolutive):Dative for the full
predicational form, and Nominative (or Absolutive):Genitive (if there is a
separate one; else, the Dative still does here, or one of its elaborations, or
the Ergative = Genitive). And so forth. This is summarized in (2).
(2) Propositional Schema:
ρ (χ1'...,χη) η = l,...,m realized as [ΝΡ1'.,.,ΝΡn Vp]
for:
(xl x 2 ) = "A", "O", p(x 1 , x 2 ) is a true transitive;
(x1', x 2 ) = "O", "D", p(x1' x 2 ) is an inverse transitive [in
many I-Ε languages realized only as some p'(x 2 , x1) like a
transitive] ;
(x1? x 2 ) = "D", "S", p(x1, X2) realized as Ñ [NPl NP 2 ], p(xl
x 2 ) is a possessive.
It will be seen that each language has a number of typical and not-so-
typical morphosyntactic means for expressing, usually, more case-markings