Re: Germanic and Celtic (was Re: Verb-second ... verb-penultimate languages?)

Andreas Johansson skrev:
> Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:
>
>
>>Hi!
>>
>>Peter Bleackley writes:
>>
>>>...
>>>I was wondering if there could have been a VSO Germano-Celtic
>>>ancestor, of which a dialect developed topic-fronting, which then
>>>branched off to become Germanic with TVSO developing into V2.
>>
>>But I think at least most generative grammarians would classify German
>>as basically SOV (in most subordinate clauses), having the
>>one-movement order VSO in questions (and in certain sub-ordinate
>>clauses) and the two-movements order TVSO in propositional sentences.
>>But I don't know to what extent the SOV in subordinate clauses is
>>pan-Germanic/was Proto-Germanic.  Today, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and
>>closely related langs/dialects have it.  Others?
What about Yiddish?  This seems just like the kind of
feature that it would lose...

> Well, it's not in the continental Scandinavian languages or in English. I
> suppose that leaves Icelandic (Benct?) and Frisian.
Not a trace of SOV in either Old Norse, modern Icelandic or
the mainland Scandinavian languages -- I don't *know* about
Faroese, but I would be surprised indeed if it had *acquired*
SOV since Old Norse! :-)  ON is/was of course solidly V2.

> Ancient Scandinavian inscriptions have, at least some of the time, SOV in main
> clauses.
>
>                                                Andreas
>
>

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)