--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" wrote:
>
> > From our previous discussion about sound correspondences of the IE
'bear' word, I'd recall the velar stop in Hittite hartagga- doesn't
derive from a "thorny cluster" but rather from a suffix like Turkic
qarsaq 'steppe fox', a long-range cognate. From this and other reasons,
I think this is a pre-Kurganic word, that is, not derived from Kurganic,
i.e. the language of the Steppe invaders.
>
> It's a pity you don't recall Piotr's explanation of 10 March 2012 in
post
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/68899 of the
significance of the spellings of the word, such as the entirely typical
nominative singular HAR-TÃG-GA-AS, namely, "From these spellings,
we may infer that the Hittite pronunciation was /h&rtka-/, in perfect
agreement with the reconstruction *h2r.tk^o-."
>
It's a pity you didn't read my posts about the external cognates of this
word, namely:
NEC *XHVr[ts´]V 'marten; otter'
Altaic *karsi 'fox, marten'
This evidence suggests this word has a palatal(ized) affricate,
variously rendered into t,kt,ks,s in individual IE languages. There's no
"thorny cluster" here.