Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 68784
Date: 2012-03-06

At 3:46:53 PM on Monday, March 5, 2012, Tavi wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>>> BTW, if <horse>, <hros>, <Ross> are loanies from the
>>> Alanian-Iranian *urSa & al. Asian vocabularies, has Lat.
>>> ursus the same (PIE) origin?

>> Like Gk. ἄρκτος (árktos), it's from *h2rtk^o- 'bear',
>> though Sihler suggests that it may have passed into Latin
>> from another dialect.

> Not impossible. This root is difficult to reconstruct as a
> single IE protoform because of the various reflexes of the
> sibilant affricate found in the NEC cognate *XHVr[ts´]V
> 'marten; otter' and corresponding to the rare cluster
> *tk´.

Your putative NEC 'cognate' obviously has nothing to do with
reconstruction of a PIE protoform.

Brian