Directional markers

As the baby will be here at any moment, I figure I'd better take some time to document anything still floating around in my brain. Today's topic is directional markers, as inspired by Nahuatl usage. I'm not positive I'm going to go forward with this, but I'll throw it out there.

I've been realizing over the last month that many other particles beyond na, ia, ai and the pronouns could reasonably appear independently: te, li, pu and the like as other ways of responding to questions, for example. Why not locative particles -- ne, la, o -- as well?

In this context, they would presumably modify the semantics of the verb phrase to indicate the directionality of the action. I'm thinking of contexts like these for ne, for instance, suggesting durative presence in a state or activity:

ota ne!
wait LOC
"wait/stay there!"

ta ma asu ne
3SG IMP dwell LOC
"she was living there"

ni tai ne, ni pea ne
1SG be LOC, 1SG stay LOC
"j'y suis, j'y reste"

With la and o, the meaning would theoretically indicate motion towards or away from a given deictic center, thus something like

ta mene la he leo
3SG go ALL TIME today
"he's going there today" (somewhere we're talking about)

ta lahe o he amu
3SG leave ABL TIME morning
"he left there in the morning" (some place we're talking about)

In addition to this, though, the Nahuatl usage I mentioned above extends this metaphorically: la becomes tied to the known, safe, self, group, land, etc., where o indicates other, unknown, unsafe. For example, in addition to ta pahu "she fell," we could have the following two translations with additional meaning:

ta pahu la
3SG fall ALL
"she fell [to safety]"

ta pahu o
3SG fall ABL
"she fell [into the water/fire/canyon etc.]

In the same way, tu ma moho kivi i pea "they kept throwing stones" could be given some additional context:

tu ma moho kivi la i pea
3PL IMP throw stone ALL FIN continue
"they [other people/the enemy] kept throwing stones [at us]"

tu ma moho kivi o i pea
3PL IMP throw stone ABL FIN continue
"they [our people] kept throwing stones [at them]"

Or with even simpler concepts,

tule la
come ALL
"come here"

mene/lahe o
go/leave ABL
"go away"

Maybe things like

ta ipo ka sahi o
3SG drink DEF wine ABL
"he drank the wine all up" [with negative connotation]

sano ta o
say 3SG ABL
"just go ahead and say it"

sano ta la
say 3SG ALL
"come on, just tell me"

Anyway, you get the idea. It seems like a pretty useful thing to be able to do, as long as it doesn't cause any problems; I'll keep thinking about that. Next up: what adjectival structures, and therefore also object incorporation, actually mean...