*kʷetwóres rule
The *kʷetwóres rule of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is a sound law of PIE accent, stating that in a word of three syllables é-o-X the accent will be moved to the penultimate, e-ó-X. It has been observed by earlier scholars, but it was only in the 1980s that it attracted enough attention to be named, probably first by Helmut Rix in 1985. Examples:
The rule is fed by an assumed earlier sound law that changes è to ò after an accented syllable: *kʷetwóres < *kʷétwores < *kʷétweres. Rix invoked the rule in the 1998 preface to the Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben (p. 22) to explain why in the PIE perfect the root ó grade is accented: *ǵe-ǵónh- / *ǵé-ǵn̥h- < *ǵé-ǵenh- / *ǵé-ǵn̥h- "created/engendered". The rule has been invoked by Mottausch to explain accented ó grades in the PIE nominal ablaut. References
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