No Proto-Celtic?

[Stanley Friesen]

At 10:24 AM 6/4/01 +0000, Gabor Sandi wrote:

>Actually, I don't think that I said anything about the position of full NP
>subjects relative to verbs. Still, having a different order for personal
>pronouns is not that unusual, is it?

Yes, but when that is the case, the pronoun almost always comes *earlier*
in the sentence than a noun would.  What you are suggesting is the reverse,
with he pronoun coming *later* than the noun.  This is, at best, highly
unusual.

>In the Romance languages the direct
>object of the verb normally comes after the verb if it is an NP (Je vois le
>chien), but before the verb if it is a personal pronoun (Je te vois).

Yep, as I said, pronouns tend to come earlier than nouns.

>Whether a similar switchover can happen with the subject is another
>question. I don't think that there is a theoretical reason why it can't.

It can, but it would lead to VSO for noun subjects and SVO for pronoun
subjects.

One of the pragmatic factors that co-determines word order is constituent
weight, with heavier constituents being later and lighter ones being earlier.

>For pre-PIE there is also the possibility that it was an ergative language,
>with the subject of an intransitive verb behaving differently from that of a
>transitive one (and like the object of a transitive verb).

Not quite.  In an ergative language the subject of an intransitive verb
takes the *case* *marking* of the transitive object, but otherwise tends to
act like a subject, including position in the sentence (though there are
exceptions).

>For the sake of argument, let us say that *me *se *te are the singular
>pronouns serving as the subject of intransitive verbs and as the object of
>transitive ones, and that they normally follow the verb.

As stated, this would be highly unlikely.  Even if nominal subjects of
intransitive verbs followed the verb, pronoun subjects would still likely
precede it, by the weight rule (unless cliticized).

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