Grammar and context: Verb government and contextual surroundings in Udmurt Both verb and noun govemment, as types of subordinating links, belong to the least researched field of Udmurt linguistics. Verb govemment may be weak or strong, and the criteria used to distinguish one type from another are quite vague. Although some sch olars claim that transitive verbs are characterized by strong govemment and intransitive verbs by weak govemment, the samples from Udmurt may illustrate the opposite, because some transitive verbs in Udmurt are used without a direct object, while certain intransitive verbs are followed by nouns in the accusative case: rOJ«:1J51Hbl yo oblUlem I-IOKUI-I3, 20JIC1J51mJ allU3 YJlOI-I 2U/-13 'You won't teach anyone to write, life itself makes us write'; Cmal-lljublCel-l HbbIJlbi)OH UCbKeMe3 nblObll-l MblHiÍ3 JJlO6a 'Ljuba walked forty kilometers from the station '. Verb govemment is influenced by affixation. Thus, different derivative and relative suffixes (e.g., the suffi x of the causative mood) may require the use of nouns in different cases: KblUlKacb JlYO Kell KblUlKa nblOYJl Kyapae3J13Cb 1-10 'A timid hare is afraid of its own sounds'; C06epe, nucmOJlemJHbl3 KblUlKamblca, opmllucb MaUlUl-lae3 oY2oblmm 'Then, threatening with his pistol, he made the car stop'. In the examples giv en above, the verb KblUlKal-lbl 'to be afra id of' is followed by a noun in the ablative case, but in the form of the causative mood (KblUlKambll-lbl 'to threaten, frighten, make smb. feel frightened'), it is used in combination with a noun in the instrumental case. Verb govemment in Udmurt is dependent on a number of semantic, morphological, and syntactic factors.