Re: Delexicalization of left & right

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006, John Vertical wrote:

> Hello List,
> So I'm planning that one of my languages shall be devoid of the concepts of
> "left" and "right".
Nice!

> I've thought up a few lexical items which need to be
> split into right and left variants, but I'd like to ask if you can think of
> further suggestions.
First, a question: how about cardinal directions? (North, south, east,
west.) Surely, these concepts must be important to hunter-gatherer
societies.

AFMCL, Ciktal has different lexical items for left index finger (aktal),
and right index finger (etal). There is no word that covers both. You
could of course go with left/right version of every body part that comes
in pairs, but it gets kinda implausible for the language to have that kind
of fine-grainedness, yet still have no words for left and right.

Other suggestions:

- port/starboard
- clockwise/counterclockwise
- right-handed/left-handed helicity

Also, the lexical items for Right Eye and Left Eye might over time undergo
semantic drift, so that they end up actually meaning right and left. This
would especially be the case if they can be combined with the words for
specific body parts that come in left-right pairs.

--
Arnt Richard Johansen                                http://arj.nvg.org/
Read This Before Opening Package: According to Certain Suggested
Versions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting
This Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred
Million Years.                      --Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky

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