I used to have a Japanese neighbour, who was working on her linguistics Phd., and she used to ask me all these weird questions about prepositions in English, and I would have to make up rules. My favourite: she once asked me if she could "topple things." After a few seconds, I suggested that in English the only thing you could topple transitively was a throne. Everything else "toppled over (buildings, vases). If she hadn't asked, I would never have noticed. You could have toppled me with a vase when I realized it!

yours, Peter T.