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Can we say something about how often a particular technological adaptation is accompanied by an adoption of the corresponding verbal expression? In other words:

Can we say something about how often a particular technological adaptation is accompanied by an adoption of the corresponding verbal expression? In other words: If the wheel has been adopted by a neighbouring community, is it not very likely that the word for it will be adopted in a linguistically similar version? As an aside: I looked for the origine of the English "wheel" and the German "Rad", and they seem to have been different IE roots: kʷe-kʷlh₁-ó-/rót-h₂-o-[1], but the word is nevertheless often given as a example for a common IE origine. So what does scholars make so sure that the original Indo-Europeans already had the wheel? Could these words not have been derived somewhat later independently from IE roots of a somewhat different meaning, or when the area occupied by Indo-Europeans was still small via techno-lingustic transfer? [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indogermanische_Ursprache#cite_note-2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indogermanische_Ursprache#cite...

bigbillheck 3y ago
You might be interested in 'The Horse, the Wheel, and Language': https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/th...
- biorach 3y ago
  Excellent book
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> Could these words not have been derived somewhat later independently That would require that the independent languages maintained the exact same derivational process of reduplication + zero-grade ablaut in the root. We know from the attested history of IE language that derivational processes last only for a while before they die out. That independent languages maintained that particular derivational process (which is inseparable from historical-phonological developments, too) for thousands and thousands of years, is extremely unlikely, which is just one of the many pieces of evidence against the Anatolian hypothesis.
- Archelaos 3y ago
  But could not a horizontal process between already separated languages/dialects smoothed that out by adapting the incorporated term to its host language, so that the date of the general phonetic bifurcations of two languages and the history of a lot of their vocabulary might be very distinct? I am thinking of such cases as certain Anglicisms that were phonetically adapted when they were incorporated into German. For example the English term "password" is in the process to replace German "Kennwort", but its final consonant is adjusted to German "Wort" as "Passwort". So phonetically "Passwort" and "Wort" vs. "password" and "word" seem to share the very same derivational process, while their actual history of adaptation is quite distinct.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    As I said, the derivational process we find here is a very specific one involving reduplication and zero-grade ablaut of the root. If we look at the documented history of the Indo-European languages, both reduplication and ablaut had already become subject to erosion, or even total loss. It is just not realistic for those two things to have survived (and, in this particular derivational process, to survive in sync!) for thousands and thousands of years.
canjobear 3y ago
Roots undergo semantic shifts in their meaning. So English "deer" is cognate to German "Tier" despite the fact that Tier means animal in German, but only one specific kind of animal in English. The German meaning is the original one for the root; in English it shifted to the more specific meaning. In German, "Rad" was originally a word that meant something like "rolling" and it generalized in meaning to encompass what was originally referred to using the cognate of English wheel, which then died out in German. It would have been something like *Wiel (Dutch still retains "wiel"). The evidence for a shared root for wheel goes much much farther back than the split between English and German. The Proto-Indo-Euopean root was something like *kwekwlos, which gives Germanic *hwel (> English wheel), Greek kyklos/cycle, Sanskrit cakra, all according to regular sound changes. So it goes back all the way to the split between these languages.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Wow, I am an absolute layperson, only having listened to the History of English podcast before from where I get some minor context, but I find the whole of linguistics so interesting. Thank you for sharing these details!
- philwelch 3y ago
  > Roots undergo semantic shifts in their meaning. So English "deer" is cognate to German "Tier" despite the fact that Tier means animal in German, but only one specific kind of animal in English. The German meaning is the original one for the root; in English it shifted to the more specific meaning. And if you go back and read Old English and Middle English texts you can actually see this happen! From https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=deer https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=deer > In Middle English texts one finds a fish, an ant, or a fox called a der, the Middle English ancestor of our word deer. In its Old English form dēor, the word referred to any animal, including members of the deer family, and continued to do so in Middle English, although it also acquired the specific sense "a deer." By the end of the Middle English period, around 1500, the general sense had all but disappeared.

bigbillheck 3y ago

You might be interested in 'The Horse, the Wheel, and Language': https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/the-horse-the-wheel-and-language https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/th...

biorach 3y ago
Excellent book

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

> Could these words not have been derived somewhat later independently That would require that the independent languages maintained the exact same derivational process of reduplication + zero-grade ablaut in the root. We know from the attested history of IE language that derivational processes last only for a while before they die out. That independent languages maintained that particular derivational process (which is inseparable from historical-phonological developments, too) for thousands and thousands of years, is extremely unlikely, which is just one of the many pieces of evidence against the Anatolian hypothesis.

Archelaos 3y ago
But could not a horizontal process between already separated languages/dialects smoothed that out by adapting the incorporated term to its host language, so that the date of the general phonetic bifurcations of two languages and the history of a lot of their vocabulary might be very distinct? I am thinking of such cases as certain Anglicisms that were phonetically adapted when they were incorporated into German. For example the English term "password" is in the process to replace German "Kennwort", but its final consonant is adjusted to German "Wort" as "Passwort". So phonetically "Passwort" and "Wort" vs. "password" and "word" seem to share the very same derivational process, while their actual history of adaptation is quite distinct.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  As I said, the derivational process we find here is a very specific one involving reduplication and zero-grade ablaut of the root. If we look at the documented history of the Indo-European languages, both reduplication and ablaut had already become subject to erosion, or even total loss. It is just not realistic for those two things to have survived (and, in this particular derivational process, to survive in sync!) for thousands and thousands of years.

canjobear 3y ago

Roots undergo semantic shifts in their meaning. So English "deer" is cognate to German "Tier" despite the fact that Tier means animal in German, but only one specific kind of animal in English. The German meaning is the original one for the root; in English it shifted to the more specific meaning. In German, "Rad" was originally a word that meant something like "rolling" and it generalized in meaning to encompass what was originally referred to using the cognate of English wheel, which then died out in German. It would have been something like *Wiel (Dutch still retains "wiel"). The evidence for a shared root for wheel goes much much farther back than the split between English and German. The Proto-Indo-Euopean root was something like *kwekwlos, which gives Germanic *hwel (> English wheel), Greek kyklos/cycle, Sanskrit cakra, all according to regular sound changes. So it goes back all the way to the split between these languages.

kaba0 3y ago
Wow, I am an absolute layperson, only having listened to the History of English podcast before from where I get some minor context, but I find the whole of linguistics so interesting. Thank you for sharing these details!
philwelch 3y ago
> Roots undergo semantic shifts in their meaning. So English "deer" is cognate to German "Tier" despite the fact that Tier means animal in German, but only one specific kind of animal in English. The German meaning is the original one for the root; in English it shifted to the more specific meaning. And if you go back and read Old English and Middle English texts you can actually see this happen! From https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=deer https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=deer > In Middle English texts one finds a fish, an ant, or a fox called a der, the Middle English ancestor of our word deer. In its Old English form dēor, the word referred to any animal, including members of the deer family, and continued to do so in Middle English, although it also acquired the specific sense "a deer." By the end of the Middle English period, around 1500, the general sense had all but disappeared.