PIE Reduplication

A few of us on this list believe that earliest PIE had three short vowels,
inherited from Nostratic vowels: *i, *a, *u.

This was followed by a stage during which the front and back vowels were
lowered: *e, *a, *o.

Thereafter, the front and back vowels were leveled to *a while palatal and
velar glides provided the contrasts formerly provided by front and back
positioning: *Ya, *a, *Wa.

During the next stage, the glides were (mostly) eliminated, and *a became
*A, the Ablautvokal, capable of being realized as *e, *o, and *Ø, determined
by the stress-accent.

If the earliest reduplication vowel were *i, i.e. *í, is it possible that,
because it was never not stress-accented, it did not participate in the
further developments of the short vowels, which could be stress-accented or
not.

It would have been sui generis, an insulated attachment to whatever vocalic
development was current but not participating in the development.

Does this make any sense at all to anyone but myself?


Patrick