the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2000 9:28 PM

> In a message dated 1/29/00 3:19:23 AM Mountain Standard Time, edsel at glo.be
> writes:

>> So, the linguistic spread of these words is not necessarily (in my view NOT)
>> related to spread of the 'wheel technology' nor to its dating. If the
>> technology had been responsible for the spread of the word(s), it is likely
>> that all IE lgs. would have adopted the same word, quod non.

> -- the fact that the _same_ words are used over so many language familes is
> strongly indicative.

[Ed]

They aren't: Actually, basically three different, and very ordinary, words that
probably exist (I mean words with these meanings) in any language. As I said
before: all these words seem to have had different original meanings
(*kwekwlo/'round, circle', *rotho/'revolve', *droghos (trochos-tropos)/'turn
(back)'...). Different languages (or groups) picked different pre-existing
words to describe the wheel, chariots, wagons etc. Since there are only three
such words that were actually used for the wheel (I can't think of many other
semantically related words than those meaning 'round', 'rotate' and '(re)turn'
for 'wheel'; wagons are another matter), no wonder they appear, BUT seldom
together, in tens of IE languages. e.g. in Du. 'rad' and 'wiel' do exist side
by side, but the former is archaic and probably a loan from H.German, or from
another dialect. It seems that 'rad' (meaning '(cart)wheel' has 'never' been
used in spoken language, as far as we can know. Even the round ponds created by
the vortex behind breaches in dikes are called a 'wiel' in Flanders.

BTW, I wonder if the Du. word for whirlpool, '(draai)kolk' has any relationship
with '*kwe(kw)los'.

Ed.