Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" wrote:

>
> > 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]."

>

How could that proposal be more likely than the alternative borrowing
hypothesis? Which other Latin words would be the result of such a
"tabooistic distortion"? I'm very skeptical of this explanation.

In fact, I don't consider De Vaan's to be a significant improvement over
his predecessors' (e.g. Ernout-Meillet's) and I think it's rather
mediocre when compared to his contemporary Matasovic's.

> > 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'.

>

This isn't surprising, as the "PIE" reconstruction has been tailored to
match the Hittite form.