Dear list members,
When one analizes linguistic evidences to find out genetic
and areal relations of different groups of languages, 3 sorts of data are
usually involved: morphological, phonological and lexical facts. Perhaps it's
possible to use the 4th source of information - synchronous change
(broadening or narrowing) of the semantic fields of words or
stems?
Many stems in IE languages have several related meanings (I
don't mean homonyms). Some of such semantic connections are obvious and can't be
an indicator but some other are not trivial and can reflect something special in
the national psychology of the society where they first appeared. If
such broadering of the semantics occurs simultaneosly in several
languages perhaps we may take it as a shared innovation? Or if one of semantic
"branches" of the stem is simultaneosly lost?
To my mind one of examples of the non-trivial semantic
connections are English lie (= German liegen)
and lie (= German luegen). I don't think these
are just homonyms as we also have in Russian lezhat' (to
lie on smth.) and lozh (a lie). I wonder does this pair exist
in all IE groups? If not, we can consider it as a common innovation or a
borrowing (both facts are interesting). If yes, we get the information
on PIE national psychology. Anyway these things are worth investigating, are not
they?
Then, does English attr. left (German
link, Russian levyj) belong to the same
initial (maybe pre-PIE) stem? If so we get a double opposition:
left - right (spatial aspect)
to
lie - right ('correct' - moral aspect)
Besides that right-stem has juridical aspect
(Russian pravo), ethical aspect (Russian
pravda) and the meaning of a direction (German
Richtung, Russian na-prav-lenie). I belive
p- in Russian words is the residue of the prefix
po-. Is it correct?
Then, does first (Russian
pervyj) belong to the same group?
I guess not all my suppositions are correct. On the other
hand it's possible to suggest more new ones.
What do you think about this?
Alexander