No Proto-Celtic?

[Larry Trask]

--On Monday, May 14, 2001 12:12 pm +0200 Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be>
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?

Most of you will be acquainted with W. P. Lehmann's book arguing that PIE
must have been an SOV language with typical SOV syntax.  After that book
appeared, someone -- I think it was Paul Friedrich, but I'm not sure, and I
apologize if I've got this wrong -- wrote a riposte, in which he argued
that PIE must have been VSO.  This article was mischievous in tone, and the
author made it clear that he was writing only as a devil's advocate, in
order to show that a plausible case could be made for VSO order, if anybody
wanted to do that.  I think the article was in Lingua, but I can't remember
that either.  Gad -- why have I forgotten so much stuff?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)