The imposed conditions for the Sievers's law reversal are specifically Germanic, not Proto-Indo-European. Thus the following two verb forms show normal Germanic distributions in good order: Proto-Germanic *"wurkīþi" "(s)he works", *"wurkijanþi" "they work" become Gothic "waurkeiþ" , "waurkjand" (Gothic makes no distinction between -ij- and -j- in writing); and Proto-Germanic *"satiþi" "(s)he sets", *"satjanþi" "they set" become Gothic "satjiþ", "satjand". But the forms in their Proto-Indo-European shape were , and , respectively. Without Sievers's influence these would pass etymologically into Germanic as **"wurkiþi", **"wurkjanþi" and **"satīþi", **"satijanþi". The regular Germanic evolution of *"ur" from made a light root syllable heavy, and thus *"wr̥g-" > *"wurk-" created a triggering environment for a heavy suffix, *"-iji-"/*"-ī-", yielding Gothic "waurkeiþ". The opposite occurred regarding "satjiþ", where the etymological *"-iji-"/*"-ī-" (PIE ) was decremented to *"-i-" because the light syllable created the environment for a light suffix. So, a Proto-Germanic *"satijiþi" was turned to *"satjiþi" by Sievers's reversal, which in turn was simplified prehistorically to *"satiþi". Gothic re-inserts the -"j"- via analogy, yielding "satjiþ" (contrast Old English "bideð," which does not re-insert the -"j"- therefore not yielding **"biddeð"). Hence, not only are Proto-Indo-European structures not needed to account for the facts of Germanic, they actually get in the way.