Dear Mark and Piotr,
Thank you for the comments to my thoughts, not well formulated yet.
Mark:
<<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.>>
Alexander:
OK, in this case we can easily explain the semantic divarications of a couple of
IE stems ('left side-wrong' and 'right side-correct') on the universal
physiological basis, fortunately. Due to this we don't argue whether it is just
a coincidence.
<<In English we have the distinction between 'dextrous' and 'sinister'. In
heraldry, a bar sinister represents bastardy.>>
Another pair - 'dextrous'-'sinister'. Are there any 'positive'-'negative'
cognates of these roots? If not, the question would arise: why only in the
previous case we have the moral aspect of a direction?
Piotr:
<<Lie 'recline' -- lezhat', and lie 'tell lies' -- lgat' are related pairwise,
but represent two different PIE roots: *legh/logh 'recline' and
*leugh/lough/lugh 'tell lies', which do not have a common etymology.>>
Well, there were 2 quite distinctive roots by the moment of splitting of PIE
community which gave 2 independent bunches of words in daughter languages. Can
we be sure that these roots were not associated on the previous stages (say,
when PIE unity formed)? Perhaps, then such developments as *-eu- > *-e- or *-e-
>
*-eu- were usual ways of forming new words? I has been able to find only a few
examples which can be relevant: *leup/lep 'strip,leaf', *bheug/bhegw 'run away',
*bhe/bhru/breu 'brown', *les 'weak,bad' - *leus 'weak,loose', *med 'think' -
*meudh 'think,speak', *lebh 'grasp' - *leubh 'desire' (?). Please comment it.
What is origin of English "left" and German "link"?
<<I'm not sure about the origin of Slavic prav- (but I can check that).>>
As far as I know Russian "pravyj" ('of right side') is cognate to Latin "probus"
('of a good quality') and Icelandic "framr" ('forward'). The last word give us
connection with the following group:
<<Per-vyj is from the same root as fir-st, as well as Gk. pro:-tos and Latin
pr-imus. They all contain PIE zero-grade *prx- plus different suffixes, usually
expressing the superlative degree or just adjective-forming. The root
*perx-/*porx means '(push) forward', hence Latin and Greek pro:, English for,
forth and Russian pered.>>
Are not
Perun(Slavic)-Perkunas(Baltic)-Pirwa(Hittite)-Parjanya(Vedic)-Fjorgyn/Tor(Scand.
) cognates to the above words? "First (among the gods)" seems to be a good
epithet for the Sky God.
Alexander