XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: peter@pmoylan.org.invalid   
      
   I don't usually post to sci.lang, because I'm not a linguist, but this   
   topic is one that needs expert input. I hope nobody minds the cross-post   
   to the newsgroup I normally inhabit.   
      
   Almost all European languages have a "have" verb to indicate possession.   
   (And has other uses, but that's a separate topic.) The Irish language is   
   an exception, in that it lets a preposition do the job of a verb. The   
   equivalent of English "I have an apple" is "Tá úll agam", literally "Is   
   apple at me".   
      
   Scots Gaelic is similar (Tha ubhal agam), and so is Welsh (Mae gen i afal).   
      
   And so is Russian. The Russian for "I have an apple" is "у меня есть   
   яблоко", literally "at me is apple". Apart from word order, this is   
   identical to the Irish example.   
      
   This bothers me. What should (most) Celtic languages and (some) Slavic   
   languages share a feature that is not found in the many languages that   
   sit geographically between them?   
      
   My question: does this suggest that the Slavs and the Celts were in   
   contact at a critical time of language evolution?   
      
   An alternative possibility, I suppose, is that this used to be a   
   standard feature of IE, one that most of the successor languages   
   eventually lost. But that sounds less likely to me.   
      
   --   
   Peter Moylan                         http://www.pmoylan.org   
   Newcastle, NSW   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)