[Lingtyp] Languages with connotations for 'left' and 'right'

[David Gil]

On 01/03/2019 11:04, Randy J. LaPolla wrote:
> This is certainly the case in Old China, where left is east (the 
> primary orientation in Chinese thought is to the south),
Interestingly, you get a different association in the Middle East, where 
the primary orientation is to the east, and thus, the country-name Yemen 
(located on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula) is cognate with 
the word for "right".

(Correspondingly, I have a vague recollection — but I could be wrong — 
that, somewhere in Afroasiatic languages, there is colexification of 
"left" and "cold", but I don't currently have library access or good 
enough internet to be able to follow up on this.)

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany

Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
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