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

[Thomas McFadden]

>  ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Thomas McFadden" <tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 2:22 PM

>> it seems to me that explanations of this type (both the one from
>> Vidhyanath Rao and Patrick Ryan's response to it) are going to run
>> serious danger of violating some desirable version of the uniformitarian
>> principle.  unless i misunderstand what they're arguing.

> [PCR]

> I do not immediately see the application. Why not explain the connection you
> see?

> Pat

the remark was based on a misunderstanding on my part of what Vidhhyanath
Rao was arguing for.  unfortunately i deleted the messages i was
originally talking about, so i couldn't go back and re-read your
suggestion, but i was concerned that a language was being postulated that
made no morpho-syntactic distinction between finite verbs and nouns.
since all attested languages do make that distinction (in a variety of
very interesting and very different ways), it would violate the UP to
argue for an unattested language that didn't.  like i said, i don't have
your posting on the topic anymore, so i don't know if you were actually
suggesting something of the sort, or if i just misunderstood, as i did
with V.R.'s posting.

Tom

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