Renfrew's Celtic Scenario

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>petegray at btinternet.com writes:

>English of a slightly earlier time (still intelligible today) shows good
>similarities in person endings, eg: Thou hast, thou makest;  she hath, she
>maketh
>du hast,  du machst,   sie hat,  sie macht

-- But the English of today -- and of the past few centuries -- uses much
simpler forms:  You have, you make, she has, she makes.  There's been a
radical loss of inflection (not to mention the loss of grammatical gender,
the declension of the noun, the role of word order in forming sentences, etc.)

By way of contrast, early Greek and Sanskrit share many retained PIE features
-- the present, aorist and perfect, for instance.