the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote (1/22/00 12:12:34 AM):
<<If it was borrowed into PIE while PIE is still united, that dates the era of
PIE unity.  And if it was borrowed later, it wouldn't show the characteristic
sound-shifts of the daughter languages... and it does.>>

I wrote:
<<...but what are the dates on those SPECIFIC sound changes you are
talking about?  And what makes you think they occurred immediately after PIE
was disunited?>> (caps mine.)

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote (1/22/00 12:12:34 AM):
<<-- because that's what _defines_ the PIE (linguistic) breakup.  If the
language hasn't changed, it's still PIE.>>

Even I know that the sound changes after PIE split up DID NOT happen all at
once.  And even I know that the SPECIFIC CHANGES observed in "wheel" words
may not have occured until the IE dispersal was well on its way.

Even I know that if "the language has changed" and is no longer PIE, the
SPECIFIC sound changes in *kwelo, etc., may not have happened until later.
Those changes may NOT be the ones that defined "PIE (linguistic) breakup."

But my question was not really rhetorical.  What ARE the SPECIFIC SOUND
changes identified in early 'wheel' words and what suggests that they are
even exceptionally early?  I would value anything you might offer regarding
this.

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote something arresting with regard to the "other"
word for wheel that fills the "semantic slot" in many IE languages (Latin,
rota; Lith, ratas; OHG, rod; Ir, roth - cf. Skt, ratha).

<<...I wonder, though, whether
another word for wheel, *rot(H)o-, might not be a (pre-)Celtic
borrowing in the other IE lgs. that have it (Latin, Germanic,
Baltic, Indo-Iranian).  The root *ret(H)- "run", besides the word
for "wheel", does not have any semantic development (or e-Stufe
forms) outside of a bit in Baltic and Germanic, but especially in
Celtic.  On account of the *o, the word can't be Germanic or
Baltic (with the above caveats, but this is a merger *o > *a).
If the word is a borrowing from Celtic, we can also dispense with
the laryngeal.  Celtic, like Armenian and Germanic, probably had
started aspirating the IE tenues at an early stage (which would
account for the loss of *p in Celtic [and Armenian]).  A Celtic
*rotos ([rothos]) would have been borrowed as *rathas in
Indo-Iranian, and as there was no root *ret- (*rat-) in I-I,
there would have been no pressure to make the word conform to its
non-existent native cognates.>>

Regards,
Steve Long