Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>I've read that there's a musical instrument attested to in
>>PIE: *krut
>
>
>>What kind of musical instrument would it be?
>
>
> Welsh <crwth>, Old Irish <crot> 'harp, cithara'. The Celtic
> word was recorded in the 6th century by Venantius Fortunatus
> as <chrotta>; this seems to have been borrowed into Germanic
> as *hrotta or the like, whence OHG <rot(t)a>, and thence
> into Old French as <rote> (also the modern word), <route>,
> etc. All of these refer to stringed instruments.
It should be added that the word for has this meaning only in Celtic
(and in the languages that have borrowed it from a Celtic source). I
know of no evidence that the IEs played the crwth. Pokorny derives it
from a root meaning 'protuberance, breast, belly' or the like, with
cognates only in Baltic -- hardly an impressive distribution.
The speakers of PIE must have known some kinds musical instruments:
flutes, horns, whistles, simple string instruments such as the lyre,
various percussion instruments -- all of these and many more appear to
be sufficiently old (there is even an archaeological find from Slovenia
believed by many to be a Neanderthal flute). Perhaps names of
instruments are not well-attested because they tend to be local,
imitative or metaphorical, and therefore relatively unstable and
short-lived.
Piotr