From the Proto-Indo-European to the Classical Latin Accent

The article is concerned with the ways of establishing the (ante-)penultimate accent in Classical Latin. The author starts from the belief, formulated in her monograph (LUCIE PULTROVÁ, The Vocalism of Latin Medial Syllables, Praha 2006), that there never existed any initial accent in Archaic Latin, and therefore she attempts to describe the direct transition from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European accent to the Classical Latin accent. She reaches a conclusion that such transition is surprisingly straight and uncomplicated one. At the same time she asks an almost heretical question whether we have enough evidence that the Classical accent was indeed consistently (ante-)penultimate.