Let's have a variety of ditransitive verbs: dative-centered, subject-centered and split ones. These signify the following situations:
The third object has a specific position: it is the preverbal argument (or it could be the sentence-final one, or it could be the post-verbal one or whatever). Thus, the language permits any of
We could go on a bit: maybe the indirect object and the direct object share a marker when they're the unbolded argument, i.e. the same preposition is used for both of them. An intransitive subject, however, also uses the same preposition, whereas a transitive subject of a dative-centered verb has a specific preposition.
subject centered: subject, indirect, objectThat is, there is a hierarchy - subject, indirect object, object. In this hierarchy, the leftmost element of the subset we pick is always the "dominant" one; we have all the possible subsets with two members. Dominance in this case means that this is what the most animate argument is parsed as when the verb has the direct marker. The other bolded argument is what it's parsed as with the inverse marker.
dative centered: subject, indirect, object
split: subject, indirect, object
The third object has a specific position: it is the preverbal argument (or it could be the sentence-final one, or it could be the post-verbal one or whatever). Thus, the language permits any of
ABCV, CVAB, CVBA, BACV, BCVA, ACVBA and B are "bolded" arguments, C is the non-bolded argument. The verb has a marker for whether A or B is the subject (or (indirect) object).
We could go on a bit: maybe the indirect object and the direct object share a marker when they're the unbolded argument, i.e. the same preposition is used for both of them. An intransitive subject, however, also uses the same preposition, whereas a transitive subject of a dative-centered verb has a specific preposition.
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