Re: indo-european bears

Widsith skreiv:

If the PIE word *h₂r̥tk̑os ‘bear’ (Greek άρκτος, Latin
ursus) had survived into Germanic and down to modern English, what
would it have looked like?

Is the initial laryngeal a certain /H₂/?

On the face of it, you might guess a Germanic form *urþkaz --> English
‘orthk’. That looks very wrong, but I can't work out which
phonological rule would prevent it.

If the -tk- metathesized to -kt- (which it did in Greek – but why
would it in Germanic exactly?), then you'd get a more plausible
Germanic *urxtaz, which might have given English *orght, or perhaps
*rought.

Any comments? I am not an expert so any comments on the sound changes
I might have misunderstood or forgotten about would be helpful.

I'm far from an expert, and thus I've been somewhat reluctant, but I think you deserve an answer and hope this will trigger a qualified one from someone qualified to give it.

The easy part is that the /ḱ/ becomes /k/ in centum languages. Then I believe the /t/ would be assimilated into the /k/, although the examples I know of, like 'day' and 'home', are not fully equivalent. I also think the presence of the /r/ must have triggered Verner's law and thus /k/>/g/, which would have prevented the /k/ from becoming an /h/. AFAIK -- short, that is -- the initial /Hṛ-/ would become an /ṛ/, which would yeild /ur-/ as this development seems to be parallelled in 'under'. Systematically:

PIE */Hṛtḱ-os/ > Gmc */urgaz/ > Eng. <urrow>?

Looking at the alternative, though: I think Gmc */rugaz/ would become ON /ruggr/. That word is attested, meaning "big man". Modern Norwegian 'rugg' means "big man; big specimen of animal". As I know the word it is mostly used for "big male bear". This etymology would be fun, but my etymologies tend to be wrong, so it's probably sheer coincidence.


--
Trond Engen
- fitting the description
.

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