Here, there, everywhere

Why 'here', 'there' and 'where'?
You could see them as old locatives. Or as being bimorphemic with a
common second component.

Hittite usually has 'kuiski', 'kuiskit' "whoever", "whatever"
(cognate with Latin 'quisquis') late in the sentence, just before the
verb. It's tempting to divide the first component into '-kW'
and 'is' "he" (or "there", cf Dutch 'er'?).
'-kW' is then a, whatchamacallit, complementizer, a suffix that takes
whatever and makes an NP out of it. It would be the same suffix as IE
etc *-kWe, the "and" suffix; this also takes 'something' and "wraps
it up". For those that have written a recursive descent parser, this
corresponds to a 'throw' operation 'caught' in a surrounding NP.
Cf Basque -ko, also used to make NP's out of whatever precedes, if
it isn't identical to it; people have argued that at least the IE
diminutive -k- ('plain -k-!) might be related, although Trask, true
to form, won't hear of it).

So
'break the law'-kWe, is ...
->
'break the law', kWis
-> (VSO -> SOV)
kWis 'break the law, ...

Now if this works, *k-is "here" and *t-is "there" should construe the
same way, ie.
'VP-k, is ...'
->
'VP, k-is ...'

and similarly for 'VP-t, is ...'. That would make 'VP-k' and 'VP-t'
some sort of participles (if understood as adjectives to "he, this
one") or gerunds? *-t we know already from the PPP, but -k? Except
some of the glosses on the Manasala-Møller list excel in these two
alternating suffixes, eg. 'bake' vs. 'bathe'. Can we discern an
active/passive distinction? -k as agent marker is known in other
parts of Nostratic.

BTW -ke is used as a suffix in Latin, eg 'ecce'.

Comments?


Torsten