/kwihhan/, kwa/i-ha-

This lexeme is attested five times in inscriptions from Assur and Tabal, dating to the late 8^th century BCE. 

[A.P.]

indecl.	/kwihhan/	kwa/i-ha-na	ASSUR letter c, §6 (Assur)
			ASSUR letter d, §5 (Assur)
			ASSUR letter f+g, §20 (Assur)
			BOHÇA, §7 (Tabal)
			BOHÇA, §11 (Tabal)

[A.P.]

This adverb only ever appears combined with a negation in the corpus, and it therefore stands to reason that it represents a negative polarity item, i.e. ‘in no way, not at all, not any, none’. The effect of the word was already noted by Hawkins 1975a:139f., who took it to be a fully functional indefinite pronoun. However, the contexts do not show any inflection at work, cf. BOHÇA, §7: kwa/i-pa-wa/i (DEUS)TONITRUS-hu-za-sa NEG₂ kwa/i-ha-na wa/i+ra/i-ia-ia, approx. /kwiba=wa Tarhunzas na kwihhan warriyaya/, meaning ‘Indeed, (the Storm-god) Tarhunt does not help (them, scil. the aforementioned fathers and forefathers) at all, (as he helps me)’ (thus translated already by Hawkins 2000a:479). In ASSUR letter f+g, §20, the form appears in an intransitive clause even: á-pi-wa/i-za-a NEG₂-a kwa/i-ha-na a-sa-ti, approx. /appi=wa=anz na kwihhan asti/, possibly meaning ‘Back with us, there is nothing at all’, cf. Hawkins 2000a:537.Against Hawkins 2000a:551, /kwihhan/ cannot be a nom./acc. sg. n., cf. the discussion of the stem below.

[AH.B.]

That the present lexeme is in some way different from the indefinite pronoun HLuw. /kwa/i-+ha/ ‘anyone/-thing’ was already clear to Hawkins 1975a:139f., although he regarded it as a peculiar nom./acc. sg. n. form belonging to the same paradigm. However, his original claim is not tenable for three reasons: first, the entire remainder of the paradigm of /kwa/i-+ha/ ‘anyone/-thing’ inserts the inflectional endings before the particle /=ha/; second, analysing all occurrences of /kwihhan/ as nom./acc. sg. n. does not fit the syntax, as already noted in Hawkins & Morpurgo Davies 1979a:401; third, and likewise noted by the same authors, this purported nom./acc. sg. n. form is missing the otherwise ubiquitous neuter particle /=sa, =za/, which would be highly unexpected even among pronouns, cf. the nom./acc. sg. n. of the interrogative and relative pronoun HLuw. /kwa/i-/, viz. /kwan=za/, spelt 〈kwa/i-(a-)za〉, which has likely replaced older */kwi=ha/, for which see below.

Alternatively, /kwihhan/ has been regarded as a fully inflecting pronoun in its own right with a different locus for its inflection, viz. at the end of the accentual unit made up of the pronoun /kwa/i-/ and the particle /=ha/, c.f. e.g. Melchert 2003b:191 n. 18. In fact, Hawkins & Morpurgo Davies 2010a:103 regard the present lexeme as the older indefinite pronoun, and they assume it as being replaced by the combination of fully inflected /kwi-/kwa-/ and added /=ha/, which essentially orders the same morphemes in a different way by tying the pronoun and its ending together, i.e. keeping the morphological unit of the pronoun intact instead of the accentual unit. However, this is again not fully convincing, because the corpus only holds evidence for a single form, i.e. /kwihhan/.

It is therefore proposed here that the word represents an indeclinable adverb, whose function is that of a negative polarity item when combined with a negation.Due to a lack of relevant data, it remains unclear if HLuw. possessed anything in the way of a positive polarity item. If the interpretation as /kwihhan/ should hold true, this would represent the old nom./acc. sg. n. */kui=ha/,An exact cognate of Hittite kuit ‘which, what’, but without the final dental, because stops in word-final position are deleted in Luwian, and even the attached particle /=ha/ could not prevent that here. attested in CLuw. kuiḫa ‘some-/anything’, with an adverbial /-n/ added once the form had been lexicalised and thus left the paradigm of the indefinite pronoun proper /kwa/i-+ha/ ‘some-/anyone’.

[AH.B.]