No Proto-Celtic?

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:37 AM 5/30/01 +0200, Xavier Delamarre wrote:
>     But in a flexional language, especialy of the old IE variety, they are
>of secondary importance. They belong to stylistics, not to grammar.

Not quite - word order in such languages belongs mostly to pragmatics,
which *is* part of the grammar.  There are rules, even if some of them are
optional.

>     Even in modern French the difference of meaning between 'une tres grande
>maison' and 'une maison tres grande' is minimal ; you can use both sentences
>freely to express exactly the same thing (no difference in style or
>emphasis).

Actually, those look like fragments to me, not sentences.

But, even so, I suspect they are only interchangeable in some contexts.  In
others, one or the other is probably atypical or improper.  Are there not
certain questions for which one or the other is a more appropriate response?

>     I maintain that the problem of word-order is irrelevant to the study of
>PIE grammar, as much as declension in Chinese or gender in Finnish.

Not quite - word order is always part of the grammar, inflection is not.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net