the Wheel and Dating PIE

[Stanley Friesen]

At 02:29 AM 1/13/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>Technology can create and carry its own vocabulary, of course.  (I was amazed
>to hear the word 'plinth' being used by a builder the other day.)  "Learned
>words" are adapted to the phonotactics of the language but only so much -
>something being <legal> in English still does have some connection to <lex,
>legis>.  So we do in fact see at least some consistent "retrofitting" with
>words like 'theatre' and 'coffee/kava.' and 'telephone.'

But very rarely to the degree that it would masquerade as an inherited word
from a common ancestor.  Indeed with regard to "legal" we may even *have*
the inherited form: "leech" (as in physician).  (This etymology is marked
as uncertain, but it illustrates the basic point).  Accomodation usually
takes the form of merely coercing the words into the current sound
structure of the receiving language or perhaps a folk etymology like
"woodchuck" from Cree "ocek".

> And the words for
>wheel in IE languages are not as consistent or wide-spread as any of these
>examples - which might suggest diverse origins and no original word.

Except that the differences are greater than expected for a late borrowed
word - by a great deal.

><<...there are recent loan words [in Japanese] (e.g. tiishatsu "T-shirt")...>>

>I would love to compare T-shirt as it has been "accepted" into languages that
>are nearer or farther from English and see if the pattern did not approximate
>the kind of changes 'wheel" underwent.

It won't.  The word for wheel can usually be derived from the reconstructed
word via the regular sound changes distinguishing each daughter language.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com