No Proto-Celtic?

[Xavier Delamarre]

le 16/05/01 14:38, Larry Trask à larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk a écrit :

> 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?

    And Calvert Warkins answered that both were probably wrong (his article
on syntax reprinted in his "Selected Writings", IBS), PIE being a flexional
language, with free word order (every student in Latin knows this) where the
SOV / VSO controversy has no relevance.

    XD