Word Order and verb endings (was Re: No Proto-Celtic?)

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Just because verb endings come from pronouns does not mean it must go
back to VS order. Tamil provides a good example where we can attribute
it to a different mechanism.

Modern Tamil has a large number of formations based on 'auxillaries'.
[These are called compound verbs. When grammaticalized, they function
much like auxillaries.] Their origin is clear in formal speech [even if
obscured in colloquial speech], except for a former progressive. Also,
double plural endings became established some time in the medieval
period (with old plural becoming the respectful form). After removing
these, we are left with basically two forms, traditionaly called past
and non-past when referring to Classical Tamil. These can be segmented
into a stem and an ending which is clearly the pronoun in the third
person and very similar to the pronoun in the first person. For example,
the forms for the verb "va:", 'come', the forms are

varuve:n    varuvo:m    vante:n    vanto:m
varuva:y    varuvi:r      vanta:y    vanti:r
varuva:n    varuva:r     vanta:n    vanta:r
  (-a:L, -atu)

But the stems varu- and vant- also occur in non-finite functions. In
particular, stem+current form of the pronoun function as participles,
and with the neut III can also function as a verbal noun. Most
importantly, similar forms can be used to turn a clause into an
adjective: "The man who came yesterday" can be rendered as
    neRRu    vanta    manitan
   yesterday [come] man

This suggests a very different explanation: Finite verbs came from
verbal nouns and the order stem+pronoun then will be due to the usual
order of adjective+noun.

I don't presume to claim that the origin of the person/number endings in
PIE is similar: To do that we need an explanation of why these endings
do not show common gender vs neuter gender. I just wish to point out
that alternate explanations must be ruled out before asserting that
Verb-Pronoun order lead to the endings.

Regards
Nath