Re: anti-active case marking

jesse stephen bangs wrote:
> I - Actor of a volitional transitive verb
> II - object of a volitional transitive verb
> III - actor of an active intransitive verb
> IV - actor of an inactive intransitive verb
I don't know if there are any languages with a case-sytem like that,
altho Teonaht has something similar, I believe.  I assume that for I and
II you simply meant "transitive verb", without the "volitional"?

> Conceivably II and III could spontaneously fall together forming a sort of
> mixed
> ergative-active system, and if it stayed that way it wouldn't be too
> exceptional.
Actually it would still be prety exceptional.

> The resulting system would be like the one shown above.
Hmm, conceivable, but I wonder if it wouldn't change to become more
conventional, perhaps actor of an inactive intransitive might change to
take II/III, making it a simple ergative system.

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