Re: [tied] PIE Word Formation (2)

>

>The tendency to use contrastive accent must have operated throughout the
>history of PIE and into the early "dialectal" stages. Several
>chronological layers can be discerned. To begin with the oldest, there
>was a time when accent retraction to a formerly unaccented syllable
>caused the appearance of a full vowel there, while the syllable that had
>lost its accent was phonetically reduced. In particular, thematic *-o-
>became *-u-.

I am a little uncomfortable with this hypothesis.  According to this idea, shouldn't *bhor�s have then become *bh�ros (merging with original *bh�ros), which would then subsequently become *bh�rus (as would also original *bh�ros) or *bhr.us?  To me acceptance of this hypothesis would suggest that there would come to be no o-stems at all, since their unstressed *o would always be reduced to *u, including after formerly unstressed initial syllables became stressed.  I don't really understand the conditions under which thematic *-o- would become *-u-.  Also, mightn't one also expect unaccented thematic *-e- to become *-i- (in thematic verbs, etc.)?

Andrew Jarrette