Re: Metaconlinguistic terminology et alia

Sally Caves wrote:

> Leo J. Moser wrote:
> >
> > do we know if PIE was SOV or SVO or ....  ?
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> I believe I've read that Indo-European was originally
> SOV, so it stands to reason that Proto-Indo European
> may have been also.
In his book "Theoretical Bases for Indo-European" or something to
that effect, Winifred Lehman amasses a pile of Greenbergian evidence
that PIE was SOV (e.g. if you look at really old stuff like Hittite
and epic Greek, you see thing like marker-before-comparison,
postpositions, and other dead giveaways of OV structure), but that all
of its descendants moved to VO structures.

He also thinks it was originally an active/stative language, and that
the animate/inanimate distinction, as well as certain kinds of
defective conjugation and delcension, are relics thereof.

+ Ed Heil ---------------------- edheil@postmark.net +
|    "What matter that you understood no word!       |
|    Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard      |
|           In broken sentences."  --Yeats           |
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