alien xeno-anthropologists (was: Abkhaz)

John Quijada said:
>
> What "exotic" features about your language would you make up for alien
> xeno-anthropologists who visit Earth after some nuclear or biological
> holocaust to find you as the last living human being?

10. English grammar is innate. If you dissect my brain, I won't be able to
talk to you any more. QED.

9. There are 37 grammatical cases in English, but there are only three
different surface forms for them.

8. There are no concepts of "time" in English.

7. Passive sentences mean exactly the same thing as active sentences in
English: they're just different transformations of the same thing. (And
the transformations are innate. See above.)

6. All English syllables are either V or CV, but svarabhakti vowels are
common and they're all realized as zero.

5. English is a so-called "ergative-squeegee language", as evidenced by
such sentences as "This pinball machine plays really well.".

4. English is a recreolized form of a Norman French pidgin with
Anglo-Saxon substrate.

3. It's always been wrong to accent "controversy" on the second syllable
in English. On so many levels.

2. English was the only language in the world with a voiceless velar lateral.

1. D - O - G really spells "cat".


-- Mark

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