Hittite <hurkis>/wheel

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

mcv at wxs.nl earlier wrote:
<<...the Hittite word for "wheel" is <hurkis>.  No relation to the
*kwel-words.>>

This is STRONG STUFF.  It certainly seems to NEGATE the idea - often repeated
earlier on this list - that all IE languages shared a common word for wheel.
You can look back at the archives and see how often "the wheel word" was used
as PROOF of the date of PIE dispersal.

The often repeated position was that "the wheel word" had to have entered PIE
before it split up, because the word was univeral among IE languages.

And because the sound changes "the wheel word" underwent in those languages
show the word entered before those sound changes occurred.

Pointing out that those SPECIFIC sound changes do not date PIE dispersal and
that those sound changes could have occurred long after dispersal should not
have been a surprise.  I'm told that Trubetsky brought it up before and
others have made a point of it, including Lehmann have reiterated it.
Mallory seems unaware of this objection, but Mallory seems to me to be
unaware of more and more things.

(When I asked Sean Crist to identify the "telltale signs of borrowing" that
he offered that would tell him if "the wheel word" was borrowed in at least
some IE languages, he never replied.)

So, the two cases for dating final PIE unity with "the wheel word" -
universality and the presence of sound changes - seem to have DISAPPEARED
completely.   As a matter of fact, IT SEEMS THEY WERE NEVER THERE - despite
the often repeated claim that the PIE's final unity could be dated by the
wheel.

Now, this does not deter JoatSimeon at aol.com from NOW offering us FOUR PIE
wheel words - some IE languages have one, some have another.

It may strike some readers as obvious that FOUR wheel words WILL NOT support
"the wheel word" as the way to date PIE.  FOUR wheel words scattered among
the IE languages DO NOT SUPPORT UNIVERSIALITY.  (The fact that some of those
words might have reconstructable roots does not matter - especially if those
roots could or did have some meaning other than 'wheel.')

Actually FOUR wheel words say the exact opposite.  Common sense says that
there are four wheel words BECAUSE the wheel was introduced AFTER PIE SPLIT
UP.

Of course, JoatSimeon at aol.com seems not to be bothered by this.  And if
others can go on seeing "the wheel word" as PROVING that PIE must have still
been unified at 3000BC or 3500BC or 4000BC or whenever it was that the wheel
would have been introduced in PIEland, then God bless them.  They can clearly
see things with a certainty that is not revealed to us ordinary mortals.

Whether or not the actual facts are true (i.e., wheel introduced before PIE
splits), the evidence hardly makes it necessary and may even argue against
it, to the non-ideological observer.

For us ordinary mortals on this list, there's a different question: how could
this assertion that the wheel can postively and absolutely date PIE go
unanswered so often?  (Check the archive list - I found it asserted at
least13 times!!! without contradiction.) With the intellectual firepower that
plainly shows up on this list all the time, how could it be repeated so often
without someone at least questioning it or noting the difficulties?  Kind of
in the way that I might be ripped to shreads for proposing an inappropriate
sound change in Greek?

It does raise the question as to how many of these kinds of absolute
assertions about paleolinguistics deserve to be revisited.  I certainly don't
have the qualifications to do that linguistically, and I could only start
seeing the holes in this argument thanks to "the kindness of strangers."  But
I wonder whether someone more formidably equipped might not find some other
pieces of dogma also just as vulnerable.

Regards,
Steve Long