Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:01 pm

Chuma wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2019 7:56 amHow about: "In accusative languages with a marked accusative, the default case for prepositional phrases will be the accusative." Is that true?

Nope— completely falls apart for Russian. Up to four cases may appear in PPs; not infrequently, the same preposition may be used with two different cases. Accusative is one of the possibilities, but by no means predominant.

What you probably want is, "In accusative languages with a marked accusative, some prepositions will take a marked case." This covers Arabic, where prepositions take the genitive case, not the accusative case. However, such a rule will acquire exceptions if a sound changes obliterates some case markings. The question is then how long such an exception may persist. I suspect it may persist a long time, as with anomalously marked nominatives and third singulars.