From: Joao S. Lopes
Message: 70730
Date: 2013-01-20
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" wrote:
>
> At 8:45:05 AM on Monday, March 5, 2012, guestu5er wrote:
>
> > > Germanic *xurs-a-/*xrus-a- 'horse'
> >
> > BTW, if , , 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.
>
That's right. Latin ursus looks like a loanword from a "satem" language, possibly Georgiev's "Pelasgian".
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.