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

[proto-language]

Dear Nath and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vidhyanath Rao" <rao.3 at osu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 9:34 PM

<snip>

> 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.

[PCR]

First, I think we should explicit note that Adj+N is the order associated with
SOV.

Probably, the following comments are arguably more appropriate to the
Nostratic-List, and Rich may transfer this posting there if he chooses to do
so.

My studies of many language groups have led me to the conclusion that if one
can go back far enough into the syntactic structure of any language, one finds
equational sentences, composed of a Topic and Comment.

The application of this to IE is that I propose that IE or the language that
produced IE had a stage in which a statement like

*mon(u) *sek

could be interpreted to mean either

'the man is cutting (something)', or

'the man is cut',

with the context distinguishing between the two possible interpretations.

With the aid of an element, *te, designating a fellow tribe-member, hence
animate,

*mon(u) seket(e)

man cut(ting)+tribe-member

in effect, this Adj+N phrase, specified the active aspect of *mon(u), so that

THE MAN IS CUTTING (SOMETHING)

was the mandatory interpretation.

On the other hand, with the aid of an element, *?e (or *H{1}e), designating
'(something) over there', hence inanimate,

*mon(u) sek(e)H{1}(e)

man cut+(something) over there

in effect, this Adj+N phrase, specified the inactive aspect of *mon(u), so that

THE MAN IS CUT

was the mandatory interpretation.

I realize that this explanation involves many assumptions that many
list-members will be positively loath to make; and, for them, I offer this
(very much oversimplified) explanation only as a curiosity.

[VR]

> 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.

[PCR]

I presume you are referring here to the Tamil (and Dravidian) paradigm here
rather than the IE one.

In the case of IE, inanimate neuters (another oversimplification, I know) would
naturally favor stative endings; and animates, when not expressing their
animacy, would be functionally neuter.

Now I know all this needs beaucoup of qualifications but, in the interest of
hopefully not trying the patiences of list-members who will find this
speculation worthless, I have tried not to expand it overduly.

[VR]

> I just wish to point out that alternate explanations must be ruled out before
> asserting that Verb-Pronoun order lead to the endings.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)