No Proto-Celtic?

[Thomas McFadden]

> 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? 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).

> 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.

if you were arguing that PIE was VSO, no matter whether the subject was
full NP or pronoun, then fine, that's no problem if it can be
supported.  there's nothing at all implausible about the idea that clitic
pronouns in such a situation could have developed into agreement suffixes,
of course.  appologies.  and no, there's nothing unusual in personal
pronouns having a different order than full NPs, it is very common, but i
think the specific case where full NP subjects precede the verb and
pronoun subjects follow it would be very odd, simply because the examples
of ordering differences that im familiar with are like the one you mention
above, where full NP objects follow the verb and pronouns precede,
presumably because, being lighter elements, they're more susceptible to
cliticization.

> Admittedly there are problems here, including the fact that older IE
> languages definitely favour VSO word order,

i may be betraying a lack of important knowledge here, but what makes you
say this?  which older IE languages favor VSO?  i suppose this is why i
misinterpreted your previous post, because i didn't understand the
positing of VSO as the basic order.  (and i am honestly asking here, not
just looking for trouble!)

Tom McFadden