Re: [tied] Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

> I put the following proposal to you. An early form of PIE did have the
> vowels *i and *u. However, when stressed these vowels diphthongized to
> *ei and *eu. Thus the zero grades represent the original forms. In
> this light verbal roots in *u and *i are easy to find since the
> zero-grade represents the actual vocalic structure.

My version: to *ei an *ou, which is more plausible phonetically. *oi
and *eu were introduced later by analogy to the ablaut grades *e/*o/zero.


Torsten