spatial/locational paradigms

[Jess Tauber]

Thank you Blair- I'm curious about those suffixes -eh, -a?, -eN? you
mentioned in Tuscarora. One of the things I'm finding as an areal phenomenon
in SE North America (and perhaps further afield) is something I'm calling
(for want of a better name, suggestions welcome) the "intimacy" system.
Degrees of intimacy of contact are encoded on the verb by affixes. In
Muskogean, its those interesting petrified singular suffixes. In Tunica,
final vowels. And so on. In Siouan, of course you have i, a, o (similarly for
Chimakuan). And of course Ute has a graded vowel based demonstrative system.

In Tunica, verb final vowels are a subset of the total, just i, a, u (and
semantically there appear to be two versions of u, one of which may fit the
in-system role of shwa).  i-final roots have a sense of minimized contact
between substrate and trajector, u- maximum, and a- finals are in between.
The inside/outside relation is obvious, but subtle. Also please note the
vocalic ablaut reconstructed for aspect marking in Salish by Dale Kinkade.
English metaphor suggests being "into" a location is somewhat equivalent to
being deep in a state, think also of uses of "over", "through", "outa here".
Finer points of semantics of "intimacy" terms would be specified by the root
itself, and other external marking.

So what do the Tuscarora suffixes encode?

Jess