the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

----- Original Message -----
From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2000 8:29 AM

[snip]

> Remember that I offered two ways for the word for "wheel" to spread across a
> already existing IE diversity.  The first was as a technological innovation.
> The second was as a preexisting word adapted to a new meaning.

[snip]

> Finally there is the matter of about half of IE apparently not using
> *kwelos/*kolos (fl. Buck) at all as the source of its word for wheel.  So
> that the predicted sound changes extend as far as I can see only to some IE
> language families - particularly German and Slavic - and agreeing with Buck I
> don't think Greek is one of them.  (And when you have at least two words for
> wheel you don't have strictly speaking the singularity that necessarily
> suggests pre-divergence unity - compare the word for 'wool' e.g., which
> demonstrably would be older than the word for wheel.)

[Ed. Selleslagh]

To that, I would like to repeat what I said before Xmas (but it got published
on the list two weeks later), and recently (about the reduplication in
*kwekwlo), becuase it widens the range of probably pre-existing words:

"What if all the IE words like *kwekwlo- or *rotHo- , and Gr. trochos are older
than the wheel/chariot/wagon, and represent only new uses as required by the
emergence of new technology? (cf. German Rechner = computer, a new use of a
much older word).  My suggestions would be the following:

- Tro'chos/trocho's: maybe a variant (Mycenean inspired? cf. iqo - hippo's)
  related to Tro'pos/tropo's, meaning 'turn, return'
- *kwekwlo-, Gr. kyklos: meaning 'circle, round'.
- *rotHo- : meaning 'rotate, turn around, revolve, spin'.

[*kwekwlo (or *kwekulo) looks to me like a reduplicated form, probably inspired
by the reconstruction from Grk. kyklos. Indeed, it is the logical thing to
assume if you try to reconstruct from Germanic (Eng. wheel, or Du. wiel <
hwi:l- < *kwelo), and we know the Old Greek tendency to reduplication and
insertion of quasi-dummy syllables for basically 'prosodic' reasons, like in
the sigmatic aorist etc. On the other hand, M. Carrasquer said:  "The PGmc.
form was something like *hwe(g)wlaz", which would mean my view is wrong.]

That would mean various things:

1. IE languages had a choice among pre-existing semantically related roots for
the new technology.

2. Even if they had all chosen the same root, quod non, this would still not be
proof of IE unity at the moment the wheel was invented or became known to IE
lgs. speaking peoples.

Just a thought..."

BTW, I don't understand why you exclude Greek from the *kwe(kw)los group, or is
it only from the ones that share the sound changes of the word?

> Which brings me back to what I think is the more convincing explanation -
> that diverse PIE speakers used a pre-existing word to describe the wheel.

[snip]

> And I hope at least that I'm suggesting that the theory that PIE can be dated
> by such vocabulary is not entirely leakproof - even to those who have been
> convinced by such methods in the past.

> Regards,
> Steve Long

I couldn't agree more.

Ed.