mobile pronouns (was: No Proto-Celtic?)

[Lionel Bonnetier]

Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

> As a non-linguist I wonder if the personal endings of verbs (the person
> marker), which are basically remnants of suffixed pronouns, cannot be viewed
> as an indication that PIE was actually verb-initial (verb-[suffixed]S-O), at
> least with pronouns as subject?

There's a trend in many languages to put shorter words/phrases
nearer to their grammatical head:

  Tell /us/ your story
  (instead of Tell your story to us)

  Tell /it/ to the clan
  (instead of *Tell the clan it)

In a SOV language, when S is a short pronoun, and you feel S is
linked to V rather than O, you might switch to OSV or OVS, the
latter being preferred if the OV group is felt as a strong
cluster.

That's another non-linguist's opinion...

(Hello everybody, I'm new on the list. I've always been
interested in linguistics, but I work in technical programming,
though I'm trying to get to natural language processing and
semantics. Etymology is a constant source of inspiration for
me to shed light on how ideas interconnect.)