Le pronom indéfini osque pitpit "quicquid" de Paul Diacre à Jacob Balde: morphosyntaxe comparée des paradigmes *kwi- kwi- du latin et du sabellique

In spite of its commonplace appearance, the entry Pitpit Osce quicquid transmitted by Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus) deserves our full attention in many respects. On the one hand, as regards the reception of the gloss, it has so far remained unnoticed by linguists that the lemma had an unexpected destiny, since the Alsatian Jesuit Jakob Balde introduced the word pitpit in his poems De Eclipsi Solari and Poesis Osca sive Drama Georgicum. On the other hand, as regards the linguistic background of the gloss, the morphological correspondence between pitpit and quidquid presents some surprisingly complex problems, because the Oscan epigraphical documentation has (or, more precisely, seems to have) two sets of forms, pis.pis and píspíd. The question then arises as to whether the masculine form of pitpit was *pispis or rather *pispit, a form which is actually attested in a defixio of Petelia (in Greek script). In order to reexamine the historical analyses of pis.pis, píspíd and pitpit it will be necessary to reconsider the synchronic paradigm structure and the historical morphology of Latin quisquis, quidquid and to discuss the comparative evidence (Hittite kuiš kuiš, Tocharian kuse ksa). Armenian inč' also will be submitted to close scrutiny. The South-Picene word pimpíh (Casteldieri) shows that píspíd may be the older form within the Oscan corpus. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, the direct (genetic) comparison between pis.pis and Hittite kuiš kuiš is highly questionable.