No Proto-Celtic?

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:36 PM 6/8/01 +0000, Gabor Sandi wrote:

>I think that it is odd as well, yet I can't help noticing that personal
>markings of verbs in IE (and Uralic and Altaic as well, for all you
>Nostraticists) consistently come after the verb stem and not before it.
>What's more, some of these endings contain consonants identical or similar
>to what is found in the corresponding personal pronoun. -m- in the first
>person is the most obvious (in PIE and Uralic, plus some other proto
>languages), as is the -t- in the 2nd person plural (also, 2nd person sing.
>in Uralic), -t- in the third person less so, the -s- in the 2nd person sing.
>not at all. There are three competing hypotheses:

>1. coincidence
>2. agglutination of the pronoun
>3. there is a relationship, but the ending is not the result of an
>agglutination of the verbal root with a pronoun

>If the answer is no.2 above, I would like to come up with a succession of
>linguistic changes that look reasonable and result in the pattern we see.

Well, it is certainly possible that some pre-PIE language was VSO without
effecting the possibility that PIE itself was SOV.  Such transitions are
attested.  Perhaps this means that Proto-Nostratic was VSO, perhaps
not.  Either way, once the clitics have transitioned into inflections there
is no bar against a change in the unmarked position of the subject.

[Note, reconstruction of word order is difficult, there is good evidence
for "early" VSO in both Germanic and Celtic - but that is still later than
the classical IE languages].

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