Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

At 5:01:54 PM on Tuesday, March 6, 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.

> What's the problem with this etymology?

You missed the point completely, which suggests that you
don't understand how comparative reconstruction works. PIE
is by definition the most recent common ancestor of the IE
languages, as best we can reconstruct it. The NEC languages
are not IE, so the have no legitimate rôle to play in the
reconstruction of PIE. Even assuming that the PNEC
reconstruction is justifiable and that a relationship
between PNEC and PIE is demonstrable -- I'm agnostic on the
first and consider the second extremely unlikely -- your
statement is methodological nonsense.

Any possible relationship between PIE *h2rtk^o- and PNEC
*XHVr[ts']V becomes relevant only when those reconstructions
become part of the evidence for a common ancestry for PIE
and PNEC. This, of course, is necessarily preceded by their
convincing reconstruction from their putative reflexes,
which is a family-internal matter.

Brian