[tied] Re: Unreality...

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:

> I don't know, but my guess would be prehistoric sandhi between stem
> and flexive. The unmarked vowel is certainly /e/ in the stage we
> reconstruct. We find /o/ caused by accent weakening and by sonority
> increase. The common denominator would seem to be tonal lowering.

And

> [o] does have a lower tone than [e], so that's my guess at a
> causation.

The UTexas IE site mentioned some kind of tonic accent scheme as a
possible origin for Ablaut, which I think is likely. As you
said, /o/ has a lower tone than /e/. If the rule in (pre-)IE words
was that each word could have only one high-tone syllable, then any
vowels preserved with low tone would become /o/. What remains is a
way to determine where low-tone vowels were preserved and not
apocopated.

- Rob