Valence of 'to place', or what is obliqueness?

[R. Rankin]

Lindsey Whaley, author of the typology textbook I've
been teaching from, seems happy calling 'to place, put'
trivalent.  My students have occasionally wondered
whether {locative} is equi-valent with {subj.} or
{obj., and I have to confess I've never been able to
answer the question even to my own satisfaction.  You
can argue from relative frequency of required locative
arguments, in which case you probably feel that
locatives are highly questionable as equal
participants.  Or you can argue from a more Boasian
point of view that, while numbers favor having just 3
"core" valencies, languages can be quite unpredictable,
and sometimes locatives must be admitted.  Like David,
I began my career as a Bloomfieldian -- more or less --
and I tend to favor the idea that "obliqueness" is a
state of mind.  And in some languages it may have to be
part of the core.  But maybe I just enjoy being
iconoclastic.

The origin of "oblique" is interestingly trivial.  For
many classical grammarians the nominative {subject}
case was the "casus rectus" and was represented by a
vertical line on a piece of paper (rectus = upright).
The remaining cases were then represented by other
lines slanting  to the baseline at different degrees of
inclination, so that the whole diagram was like looking
down onto half of a pie that has been cut into slices.
In other words, the lines representing the other cases
formed OBLIQUE angles with vertical the casus rectus,
and, as you moved from case to case, the angles
DECLINED.  Thus the origin of 'declension' and 'oblique
cases'.

In the Classical scheme of things, some cases were more
'oblique' than others, of course.  But is there really
a principled difference -- a principled dividing
line -- among them?  It's true that numerically some
cases are more common than others, but none is
necessarliy universal.  How 'universal' is the core,
really?

Bob

----- Original Message -----

> BTW, the 'to put' example's interesting: I don't
> think that the locative is 'core' argument here.