Northern Subject Rule

[David L. White]

>> Thus "They peel them and boils them".  This sort of construal is very rare
>> among languages of the world, and apart from Hebrew and Arabic occurs,
>> according to Klehmola) only in Welsh, Cornish, and Breton

> Not necessarily Brythonic.  Irish has this rule as well.

           Forgive me if I have repeated the errors of my source in this,
but fearing just such a possibility, I checked the facts of Irish and Scots
Gaelic and found that ... we can't tell, because (in modern times anyway)
these languages do not distinguish number in 3rd person verbs anyway.   I
have been unable to determine, from my sources here at home, what Old Irish
did.
        Nonetheless, I would not be surprised (and it would not matter much)
if at some point languages on the Irish side of the family had this rule,
because the rule is clearly related to verb-initiality: in verb-initial
languages, the personal ending and personal pronoun (if used) are
consecutive, creating at times rather obvious redundancy.  Dropping the
ending is one way to avoid this.

                                                            Dr. David L. White