> Let me see if I understand: By "the first *o" my guess is you mean
not the first syllable of either *bhóros or *bhorós, but rather the
suffixal *o of the first alternative *bhóros as opposed to the
suffixal *o of the second alternative *bhorós.
No, no. I mean the first *o of either word.
> So from this I imagine you mean that this suffixal *o reflects a
vocalized sonorant which was prone to reduction to *u, as opposed to
*o of other origin? Or do you actually mean the first syllable of
either *bhóros or *bhorós? Continuing, I am not familiar with
"0-metathesis". I have no idea what this is, and therefore cannot see
how it relates to the change of suffixal *-o- to *-u-. I can guess
that this has either been discussed previously on cybalist, or a
dissertation about it has been cited, but I don't know where to look.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/30940
> But if the contrastive accent shift is all that is necessary to
change *-o- to *-u-, doesn't that validate my point that all o-stems
would have become u-stems, due to contrastive accent shift? Obviously
I must misunderstand. Can you please elucidate? And what importance
is vocalization (of the sonorant that became *-o-?) to the change of
*-o- to *-u-? I am still very unclear about this matter.
The vocalisation has nothing to do directly with the developments of
the thematic vowel. I mentioned it only in the context of the relative
chronology of PIE sound changes. At some point in the history of PIE
unaccented thematic *o became possible. What's strange about that?
Every change has a limited chronological "window". Formations like
*bHóros are simply later, as a type, than those like *krétu-.
> Are you implying that thematic *-e- actually did become reduced to
*-i- in some paradigms? I've never heard of this and have no idea in
which declensions or conjugations this occurred, regardless of when it
happened, if it did. Can you please explain a little further,
including in what forms we see the reduction of *-e- to *-i-?
Originally, *o occurred before voiced consonants, *e elsewhere. My
suggestion is that in cases like *-i-h2-, *-i-ko- or *-i-sto- we see a
reflex of unaccented thematic *-e- followed by a suffix beginning with
a voiceless vowel (cf. e.g. accented *-áh2 < *-é-h2). I also think
it's quite possible that in compounds in which the first member was
thematic, its final vowel was originally *-e- (as in the vocative),
reduced to *-i-.
Piotr