Re: Odp: Semantic fields

----- Original Message -----

From: Alexander Stolbov

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 3:35 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Semantic fields

Alexander wrote: 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? Latin sinister has the same associations as laevus: 'unfortunate, clumsy' etc. in addition to 'left'. Dexter has cognates outside Italic: Celtic *dexs- (OIr dess etc.), Old Church Slavic desna 'right hand'. The associations are the same as in Latin, e.g. Welsh deheuig 'dexterous, clever' is derived from deau 'right'.   By the way, before I close my Welsh dictionary: Welsh chwith means 'left', but also 'wrong, sad, strange'. 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. Of the pairs you quote only *bhegw- and *bheug- is reliably attested; the others, as far as I can tell, are doubtful or spurious. I couldn't base a theory on a single example like this one; it may represent some excentric instance of metathesised or anticipated labiality (gw ~ ug; cf. kwetwr- ~ kwetru- 'four'). The case of PIE *legh- : *leugh- is different, as there is no *ghw in the 'lie down' root. With our present understanding of PIE root structure and lexical derivation *legh- and *leugh- cannot be reduced to a common etymology. What is origin of English "left" and German "link"? Even the two are difficult to connect. Old English lyft actually means 'idle, weak' in addition to 'left'. I'll have to consult some dictionaries before offering an answer. But cognacy with *laiwos is unlikely for phonological reasons. <<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: I haven't checked it yet, but I will. You may be right. <<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. Here's a stimulating question. You force me to think hard, Sasha.   They may be distantly related to the *perx- root, but not in the way you suggest. Hittite perunas means 'rock', so does pirwa-; and Skt. parvata- means 'mountain'. Pirwas was a Rock God (just like the Rolling Stones ;-)). V. V. Ivanov claims (and I think he's right) that there is a semantic connection between stones and thunderbolts in IE. In Baltic folklore the thunder is a stone axe or hammer. In Poland (and I suppose also in other countries) belemnite fossils are popularly believed to be 'lightning darts'. As for Germanic, everybody's heard of Thor's shrinkable hammer called Mjöllnir (cf. Russian molnja 'lightning'; the ultimate source is *mel-/mol- 'grind, crush'; Thor is the same word as English thunder). Thor's weapon was made of iron, to be sure, but this may be an Iron Age embellishment of an older story.   Now, if *perx- means 'push forward, go ahead', you can associate it semantically with names of stone projectiles and also with the Slavic verb *per- 'strike, fight'. Most likely something like 'strike, cut, tear, penetrate' is the primary meaning and 'go ahead' is derived, cf. English 'She tore downstairs' or 'I struck out for the distant hills'. Note that Latin per means 'through, across'.   We end up with *per- 'strike, cut' and its extensions: *per-x- 'go ahead' (Hittite par(a)h- 'hunt, gallop, chase'), *per-wen- 'something/somebody that strikes'. The meaning 'first, foremost' developed from the verbal sense 'push forward'.   Piotr