the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/25/00 3:49:28 PM, mclasutt at brigham.net wrote:

<<Absolutely not.  If PIE had already dispersed into separate languages or
speech areas, then there is absolutely no reason to assume that a word
borrowed into one end of the Indo-European region into one dialect/language
would necessarily spread throughout all the languages in the family. >>

Forgive me, but I'm having trouble seeing why you say this.  Doesn't the word
follow (or even preceed) the object?  Are you saying that as the word was
traded or communicated along the way there would have been some other sound
changes than the expected ones?  The assumption here of course is that the
word wheel is introduced before the regular sound changes occur.

I just read another post on this:

In a message dated 1/24/00 3:18:16 PM, mcv at wxs.nl wrote:

<<[with regard to the wheel]The sound-changes would reveal the date of the
borrowing.>>

<<This is an oversimplification.  It depends on whether there *had*
been any relevant sound changes in the intervening period, and in
general we can only establish *relative* dates for sound changes,
if we're lucky (many times not even that).  Sound changes can of
course not be dated absolutely if there are no written documents.>>

You wrote:
<<The ONLY way to account for the very existence of the word in nearly every
branch of Indo-European (Indo-Iranian, Hellenic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic,
Italic, and Tocharian)is that the word was borrowed when PIE was still a
unity.  Unless the word was borrowed when PIE was a unity, then there is no
other way to account for this widespread occurrence in the family.>>

Well the wheel is one way, isn't it?  I mean the actual wheel.  Like the
computer or the telephone or the automobile.  That would account for the word
being so widespread, wouldn't it?  I certainly don't see any geographic or
other necessity that would make it difficult.

As far as the roots, well you have these archaeologists a year ago arguing
with some strong data that the thing was actually invented maybe up in
Germany or Poland about 3500BC.  So the roots went with the package, maybe.

But does this throw everything off so badly?  I mean you get a bigger spread
of the language when the wheel hits, but it doesn't seem to be breaking any
linguistic rules (of course, I may be wrong about that.)  But is the outcome
that different?  The dates don't go ballistic.  It's not like saying that
word for wheel was introduced into French in 1957 - we are still dealing with
the dawn of the languages.

And I'm still pretty sure the word for wheel in Greek was trochos , so it
gives a little leeway for "semantic drift" or an earlier borrowing in some
places.

Regards,
Steve Long