From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 70746
Date: 2013-01-21
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> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" wrote:
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> > Latin ursus looks like a loanword from a "satem" language,
> > possibly Georgiev's "Pelasgian".
>
> De Vaan (Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, s.v. ursus) proposes that "some kind of tabooistic distortion probably affected the word for 'bear' [in Latin]."
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> > 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.
>
> The Hittite form is phonetically hartak(k)a- < hartka-, perfectly explainable as a reflex of PIE *h2r.tk'o- 'bear'. See Puhvel at
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> http://tinyurl.com/ayra9ga
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>