Hittite <hurkis>/wheel

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2000 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> mcv at wxs.nl earlier wrote:
> <<...the Hittite word for "wheel" is <hurkis>.  No relation to the
> *kwel-words.>>

> This is STRONG STUFF.  It certainly seems to NEGATE the idea - often repeated
> earlier on this list - that all IE languages shared a common word for wheel.
> You can look back at the archives and see how often "the wheel word" was used
> as PROOF of the date of PIE dispersal.
> [...]

Hey, hey, hey - a word can be replaced, or synonyms can coexist. The word
_wheel_ most certainly is of PIE date by virtue of its forms and
distribution. It got replaced in Anatolian by the hurki- stem
(Tocharian has wa"rka"nt/yerkwant- from the same root) and in Latin
and Celtic by rota etc. That says nothing more about the knowledge of the
wheel in PIE times than the rich diversity in names for the horse does
about the existence of PIE *ek'wos which can hardly be doubted.

Jens