the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<<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.">>

In a message dated 1/27/00 11:19:14 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote wrote:
<<-- those changes were not confined to those words, of course.
Eg., the PIE *k ==> Germanic 'h' transition is characteristic.  Hence *kmtom
(100) ==> hundrad (100), or many other transitions of this kind.>>

It does not matter if they occured otherwise.  The question is WHEN they
occurred.  None of this dates these changes back to PIE dispersal.  The wheel
may have been introduced BEFORE PIE *k ==> Germanic 'h' occurred BUT AFTER
PIE dispersal.

Also with regard to the sound changes in the other group of wheel words
(Latin, rota; Lith, ratas; OHG, rod; Ir, roth - cf. Skt, ratha) consider what
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote -if you might have missed it:

<<...whether *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.>>

Consider that this is at least some evidence that the <rota> wheel word is
not PIE but pre-Celt - BASED on the sound changes suggested above.

So once again what you've said so far does not force the conclusion that the
wheel word was introduced before PIE dispersed.

Regards,
Steve Long