5. Factors and reasons of salience of a somatic object in a semiotic pair
Several factors and reasons of salience of a somatic object in a semiotic pair can be outlined:
(a) (biological reason) One member of a pair becomes more salient than the other because of biological specifics of a human being. Our world is oriented towards the right-handed people, and unlike the left hand, the right hand is not marked in our society and culture. This can be proved by the contexts (generally, actions) in which the word ruka ‘hand’ is interpreted as ‘right hand’, e. g. On privetstvenno prot’anul ej ruku ‘He stretched out his hand to greet her’. The word pravyj ‘right’ is normally omitted in such contexts, and if not, its usage is stylistically marked.
Meanwhile the word ruka does not always stand for ‘right hand’, cf. Cto u teb’a s rukoj? ‘What’s wrong with your hand?’, On nosit na ruke kol’co ‘He wears a ring on his hand’, etc. To distinguish between the contexts in which ruka means ‘right hand’ and the ones in which ruka means ‘hand’ in general is an important and interesting challenge for the linguists nowadays.
As an example we will consider the case of a conflict between two principles: the one of physiological convenience[8] and the one of spatial location of an object in relation to the agent’s body. This case is the phrase Mal’cik otodvinul stojashuju na stole tarelku ‘The boy moved away the plate on the table’. Suppose the boy is right-handed, then he employs his right hand for most everyday actions, which is physiologically convenient and thus natural for him. Nevertheless, if the plate is on his left side he is most likely to move it with his left hand (as the right hand is not convenient for this). The priority principle here is not the one of physiological convenience but the one of spatial location of the plate in relation to the boy’s body.
(ii) (linguistic factor) The fact that the right member of a semiotic pair is more salient than the left one is often reflected in the structure of idioms, cf. On – moja pravaja ruka ‘He is my right-hand man’ where pravaja ‘right’ can be neither omitted nor replaced, i. e. it is a constructively necessary element of the idiom. Here the semiotic salience of the right hand is caused by the linguistic factor.
(iii) (cultural factor) Among cultural factors are rules of using specific sings and performing specific meaningful actions. Examples of the latter are carrying weapon, wearing clothes and jewelry, greetings and goodbyes, thanking and showing respect towards the addressee and more complex semiotic activities, such as rituals, manners, etc. People wear engagement rings on the right hand and swords on the left side, symbolic spitting is performed over the left shoulder[9] – all these activities directly involve one particular member of a semiotic pair.