Re: Case question

Since we're now discussing MRL languages and their poorly brought up ilk, I
thought I'd post the following fragment on that anti-ALF freaklang sketch I
mentioned some weeks ago. I no longer recall when I originally wrote it, but
no doubt during some earlier bout of case system posts. Anyway:

"Persumably, there are cases where ALF breaks down. I was thinking about a
language that would be ergative in the present, accusative in the past and
monster raving loony in the future. Formally, these cases would be mapped
ergative-accusative-intransitive and absolutive-nominative-transitive, and the
past and future tenses would be formally identical (you can still tell the
tense from the case markings on the verb's arguments, of course). I call this
system Split-Evil, and would be truly depressed if some real-world language
has it. To spice it up a bit, the ANT case would be the marked one and the EAI
one unmarked, and similarly the present would be marked with the past/future
unmarked."

                                                      Andreas

PS If you're not every now and then surprised at just how frikken weird you
are, I say something's SERIOUSLY wrong with you; you're in denial!