Rob:
> So was the *-t termination a recent phenomenon within IE's history?
In my theory, the Voicing rule of the Late IE period would suggest
against the possibility that *-t is reconstructable before Syncope since
we should find *-d instead unless its association with participial *-to-
with medial *t prevented the voicing when in final position. I'm not
entirely sure about the origins of that ending but it definitely exists
and typically marks verb derived substantives.
> *Sab`atum seems Akkadian. Where was it accented?
It's Proto-Semitic. I have a big hunch that the accent fell on the
first syllable in Semitic. In all, I suspect, perhaps to the ire of
others, that Semitic had a placement of accent based on the shape of
the syllable that was just as "quasi-penultimate" as I theorize MIE
to be but yet different.
= gLeN