From: Mark Odegard
Message: 351
Date: 1999-11-27
Alexander Stolbov writes: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?
I don't see any particular etymological connection. The semantic and phonological falling-together of English lie and lay is a paradigm for this phenomenon. I believe the verb 'lie' ('to recline'), in actual spoken English, is defective, surviving only in the present tense and present participle; the preterit of 'lie' (lay) is merged with lay as 'laid', with the past participle 'lain' being wholly archaic. English lie and lay, then, have effectively nearly fallen together. Not distinguishing the pair, at least in writing, however, is considered an illiteracy, on the order of using the double negative or ain't; for this reason, the distinction is artificially maintained. The spelling of 'laid' is itself irregular, and more than once I've had to correct myself (it's in the class of mixing up your itses), which makes the pair lay/lie my candidate for the least 'regular' verb in English.
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) &nb sp; &n bsp; to lie - right ('correct' - moral aspect)< font size=+1> 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 cannot cite the literature, but various psychological associations made between left-handedness and right-handedness cuts across many unrelated languages and cultures. In some cultures, the left hand is ritually unclean (e.g., Arab culture, as I understand, as this is the hand you use to 'wipe yourself'); this puts left-handers at something of a disadvantage. As athletes, however, southpaws have a certain advantage, as in baseball. Because most humans are right handed, the industrial world is designed around this fact, and lefties are at an additional disadvantage: left-handers, so I've read, suffer a disporportionate number of work-related injuries. In English we have the distinction between 'dextrous' and 'sinister'. In heraldry, a bar sinister represents bastardy.The association of 'correctness' and 'righteousness' with the right hand suggests a prejudice against left-handers, as indeed from time-to-time and place-to-place, there has been. I don't think any of this is particularly Indo-European, but represents a human universal.
Mark Odegard.