the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Rick Mc Callister]

	There are also similar words throughout the postulated Nostratic
languages --see Larry Trask's text on Historical Linguistics. And also, it
seems, in African and SE Asian languages as well.
	Several researchers have proposed that "wheel" was a technological
word, much like "computer" today, e.g. Japanese kompyutaa [sp?];
	If this is true, the concept and the word may have spread so fast
that it looks like as if it were inherited from IE
	There also seems to be an onomatopoetic [or expressive] element to
the class of words dealing with circles, spheres and balls
	I'd like to see some intelligent reasoned commentary on this

[snip]

>In Basque, there is a root *bil that has a meaning of 'round'. It appears in
>compounds like 'ibili' ('walk', originally: 'go around') and 'biribil' (a
>reduplicated form meaning 'round').  This could be a phonological adaptation
>of a derivation of *kwekwlo-, especially its Germanic forms (cf. Eng. wheel,
>Du.  wiel), or -just maybe- one of its oldest Celtic forms (But: mod. Welsh:
>'olwyn' = wheel, apparently with metathesis), because Basque doesn't have /w/,
>and the closest Basque phoneme is /b/ (a tendency that is still alive in
>Castilian:  Washington = Bassinton, at times even on TV! And a WC is often
>called 'un bater').

[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701