Chapter 51Interrogative, Indefinite, and Negative-Polarity Pro-forms

51.1 Overview

Hokkaido Ainu has a set of interrogative pro-forms covering the semantic slots that in other languages are filled by wh-words: things, persons, places, manners, times, quantities, and identity. They are not a uniform part of speech. Nouns (hemanta 'what', hunna 'who', hunak 'where'), adverbs (makanak 'how', hempara 'when'), and prenominals (hempak 'how many', inan 'which') all figure in the paradigm, each with distinct syntactic distribution Nakagawa (2024: 411). The same forms — or a set of n-initial cognates — serve as indefinite pro-forms ('something', 'anyone', 'somewhere') when embedded in non-interrogative clauses or combined with focus particles. Across Hokkaido, two competing root families divide the dialects: an hem-/hun- series in Saru and Chitose, and an nep/nen/ney/nekon series in most other varieties Nakagawa (2024: 415). The clausal mechanisms that convert these wh-words into questions — the existential question frame, question particles, intonation — are treated in Chapter 144 (Interrogative Strategies, Question Particles, and Evidential Questions); the present chapter covers the forms themselves, their morphological structure, their dialect distribution, and their indefinite function.

51.2 The Saru inventory

The Saru dialect uses an h-initial series for most interrogative slots. The inventory and the part-of-speech classification of each form are given below Nakagawa (2024: 411):

hunak belongs to the locative noun (〈place〉) subclass and takes case particles directly — hunak ta 'where (at)', hunak un 'where (to)', hunak wa 'where (from)' — without the intermediate locative noun or 'place-of' Nakagawa (2024: 413). The locative-noun subclass is set out in Chapter 52 (Relational and Spatial (Locative) Nouns and Their Possessed Forms).

hemanta and hunna take the existential question frame rather than a copular predicate: 'what is it?' is hemanta an? and 'who is it?' is hunna an? Nakagawa (2024: 411–413). The sequence hemanta ne is occupied by the 'why' periphrasis, where ne is the copula; a bare hemanta ne? therefore means 'why?' not 'what is it?'.

'Why' has no monomorphemic form. The three periphrases share the core hemanta 'what' and differ in what follows it: the bare purposive kusu, the bare copula ne, or both together. Nakagawa reports "no clear meaning difference" among them Nakagawa (2024: 412). The purposive linker kusu in its causal function is treated in Chapter 136 (Causal and Purpose Clauses (kusu)).

'How many' and 'which' are prenominals: they precede and modify a head noun rather than standing alone. hempak 'how many' further grounds hempakpe 'how many things', hempakiw 'how many people', and the intensive inehempak 'ever so many' Nakagawa (2024: 414, 420). The human-count suffix -iw and the thing-count suffix -pe are the same suffixes found in the numeral system; see Chapter 54 (The Vigesimal Numeral System).

51.3 Dialect geography: the h-series and n-series

Across Hokkaido, the Saru/Chitose hem-/hun- forms are replaced in most other varieties by an n-initial series. The boundary follows the established dialect division between 日高西部 (Saru, Chitose, Mukawa) and the central and northern varieties Nakagawa (2024: 415); Nakagawa & Fukazawa (2022). The full dialect comparison, after Nakagawa's table 78, is as follows:

The most internally fragmented cell is 'where (to)': Shizunai and Tokachi use enon / onon, whose e-/o- elements may correspond to the 'head/tail' directional prefixes but whose -non remains unexplained Nakagawa (2024: 417). The 'whose' or 'of which place' construction uses ney un even in h-series dialects, because the un there is the two-place relational verb 'belong to', not the allative case particle Nakagawa (2024: 417). The relational-verb un is discussed alongside the possession system in Chapter 52 (Relational and Spatial (Locative) Nouns and Their Possessed Forms).

The following pair from the アコㇿイタㇰ textbook illustrates the h/n split for 'who':

The Shizunai system as described by Refsing Refsing (1986: 109) gives the most explicit formal statement of the demonstrative–interrogative–indefinite grid, aligning an anaphoric ne- series, proximal ta- series, distal to- series, interrogative ne- root, and indefinite …ka forms across person, place, and manner dimensions. The overlap of the anaphoric ne, the interrogative ne- root, and the copula ne in the n-dialects may be "more than coincidence" Refsing (1986: 108) ‹speculative›. The demonstrative and anaphoric ne- system is treated in Chapter 50 (Demonstratives, Anaphora, and Definiteness).

51.4 Morphology of the wh-roots

The internal structure of the hem-/hun- forms is not fully transparent in the accessible grammars. Nakagawa notes that interrogatives are built on two roots (hem- and hun-) plus a third, geographically restricted root in mak- (makanak) Nakagawa (2024: 415). The n-series form ney 'where/when (n-dialect)' is transparently segmentable: ne + hi (the formal noun 'place/time'), giving 'which place/time' Nakagawa (2024: 416). The Shizunai place-form neyta adds the locative particle directly to this stem Refsing (1986: 109).

A bimorphemic analysis of the h-series has been proposed in the community: hunna 'who' = hun + na (a human-count suffix); hunak 'where' = hun + yak (the conditional yak); hempak 'how many' = hem + pak (the limitative postposition pak ‘to the extent of’); hempara 'when' = hem + pa + ara (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026), 2023-12-08) ‹contested›. The decomposition is internally consistent with the two-root observation and would explain the h/n alternation as operating at root level; it remains unverified in the peer-reviewed literature, and the grammaticalization paths it requires are not reconstructed in the available sources.

The contracted Saru variants hnta and hinta (from hemanta) are spoken-register forms. Both allow the existential question frame (hnta an? 'what is it?') and the copular why-frame (hnta ne? 'why?') Nakagawa (2024: 411–412). hemanta also functions as an ordinary noun meaning roughly 'thing-of-unknown-sort', and in Chitose kor hemanta! serves as a term of abuse (lit. 'having a whatnot') Nakagawa (2024: 412, 415). The classical grammar of Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 54–57) attests ne--root interrogative compounds — ne-kotan-un-pe 'person of which village', ne-moshir-un-pe 'of which land' — and the literary prenominal inki 'which' (inki nishpa 'which lord'), confirming the antiquity of the interrogative ne- element that the modern n-dialects preserve.

The 'when' form hempara is treated as original; the Tokachi and Bihoro n-series form nempara arose by analogical h- → n- replacement under pressure from the rest of the n-paradigm Nakagawa (2024: 418) ‹speculative›.

51.5 Indefinite pro-forms and the particle =ka

The interrogative and indefinite ('some-', 'any-') functions are distributed across two form-sets in h-series dialects. In Saru, the interrogative uses hem-/hun- forms while the indefinite uses the n-series: 'who?' = hunna but 'someone/anyone' = nen; 'what?' = hemanta but 'something/anything' = nep; 'where?' = hunak but 'somewhere' = ney Nakagawa (2024: 419). The n-dialects have no analogous split: 'what?' and 'something' are both nep. Two slots are identical for both functions in all dialects: 'how many' and 'which' Nakagawa (2024: 420).

The asymmetry is not absolute. Residual mixing occurs in both directions: h-series forms can appear as indefinites in some Saru texts, and Horobetsu — which uses nep as its interrogative 'what' — uses hemanta as its indefinite, reversing the Saru pattern Nakagawa (2024: 419) ‹corpus-suggested›. These exceptions point to ongoing reorganisation rather than a categorical split.

Indefinite pro-forms combine with the focus/scalar particle =ka 'even, also' and the scalar concessive ne yakka 'even if': nep ka 'anything (at all)', nen ne yakka 'anyone (at all)', ney ta ka 'anywhere' Nakagawa (2024: 419). The scalar semantics of =ka ('even X') combined with an indefinite root yields a free-choice reading; the particle itself belongs to the focus system described in Chapter 141 (Cleft, Pseudocleft, and Nominalization-Based Focus).

Typologically, the pattern maps onto the cross-linguistic tendency — documented by (Haspelmath 1997) — for interrogative and indefinite functions to be formally related but distinguished by particles or suppletive roots. In Ainu the distinction in h-dialects is lexical (two root sets), with =ka overlaid on the indefinite root rather than on the interrogative ‹corpus-confirmed›.

51.6 Syntactic position and embedding

Wh-words in Hokkaido Ainu are used in situ: they occupy the argument or adjunct position of the constituent they replace and do not move obligatorily to a clause-peripheral slot Nakagawa (2024: 411). This follows from the nonconfigurational properties of the language discussed in Chapter 94 (Pro-Drop, (Non)configurationality, and the Pronominal-Argument Debate), where nominal arguments are essentially free adjuncts and the verb indexes their referents independently. A locative wh-word such as hunak un therefore remains in the goal position of a motion verb:

The clausal mechanisms that convert an in-situ wh-word into a matrix question — the existential frame an?, the question particle ya, and intonation — are treated in Chapter 144 (Interrogative Strategies, Question Particles, and Evidential Questions). The wh-word itself takes no special morphology in the question context.

Wh-words embed freely in indirect questions. The interrogative pro-form stays in situ within the embedded clause, which is then nominalized by the clause-final formal noun or the nominalizer p/pe. The affiliative/possessed form is not triggered on the wh-word itself; it applies to the relational nouns that head the embedding. This parallels the general nominalization syntax described in Chapter 106 (Nominalized Complements and Control/Raising). Independent personal pronouns — including the pro-forms built on the person-affix paradigm — are discussed separately in Chapter 49 (Personal, Reflexive, and Emphatic Pronouns); the present pro-forms are not personal pronouns but belong to the nominal and adverbial parts of speech catalogued above.