Chapter 53Postpositions, Local Case, Motion Events, Comitative, and Instrumental

53.1 Two classes of adpositional elements

Hokkaido Ainu marks local relations — location, source, goal, and path — through two formally distinct classes. Satō groups both under the label postpositions (後置詞) and draws a sharp internal split: case particles (格助詞) require a preceding locative nominal (a ⟨place⟩-type noun) and are bound to it; postpositional adverbs (後置副詞) are distributionally autonomous, take any preceding nominal, and several carry person prefixes of their own Satō (2008: 34–36); Nakagawa (2024: 280, 294–296). Ijäs 2023 presents the same two-class organization Ijäs (2023).

The structural pivot of the case-particle system is the locative noun or ‘place, interior of’ (long form oro ‘place, interior of’), which converts a common noun into a ⟨place⟩-argument able to take a case particle: atuy or un 'to the sea' (atuy 'sea' + or 'place-of' + un allative). Its syntax and possessed morphology are examined in Chapter 52 (Relational and Spatial (Locative) Nouns and Their Possessed Forms); the inalienability of locative nouns is set out in Chapter 43 (The Alienable/Inalienable Split and Possessive Classification).

53.2 Case particles

Nakagawa identifies six case particles for the Saru baseline Nakagawa (2024: 296–303):

The locative ta ‘at, in, on’ covers both existence-location (ta with an existential verb) and arrival goal (ta as the endpoint of a motion event), and also marks temporal reference-points Nakagawa (2024: 296–297):

The ablative wa ‘from (source)’ marks the source of a motion event, not the path traversed. Nakagawa draws this directly: going out through a door or window requires the postpositional adverb kari ‘through, via’, not wa Nakagawa (2024: 297). The temporal source form wano extends the same locative source semantics into the time domain:

The allative un ‘to, toward’ marks directed movement toward a goal, and the contrast with locative ta is a direction/arrival distinction: un indicates a direction-headed-toward while ta marks the completed arrival point. Nakagawa illustrates with ni ka ta hemesu=an 'I climbed onto the tree' (arrival: ta) versus cikuni kasi un hemesu=an 'I climb toward the tree-top' (direction: un) Nakagawa (2024: 298–299):

The allative also appears as a case-frame on interrogative place-words: hunak un 'to where', hunak wa 'from where', hunak ta 'where (at)' — the three-case paradigm on the one place-root Nakagawa (2024: 413). Interrogative pro-forms are examined in Chapter 51 (Interrogative, Indefinite, and Negative-Polarity Pro-forms).

The perlative peka ‘through, over an area’ marks traversal of a spatially spread area. It differs from the postpositional adverb kari in requiring a ⟨place⟩ head and in denoting a diffuse area rather than a single passage point Nakagawa (2024: 299):

The translative ne ‘become, as’ predicts conversion to a state or category and does not require a ⟨place⟩ head. It also appears with numerals in copular predications (e.g., ren a=ne wa oka=an 'we lived, being three') Nakagawa (2024: 300–301):

The adnominal un forms a genitive construction linking a locative or place-name to a following noun, expressing origin or affiliation: kim un kamuy 'mountain deity (bear)', Sinutapka un kur 'person of Shinutapka' Nakagawa (2024: 301–302). This un is pan-Hokkaido invariant across all dialects, which Nakagawa takes as evidence that it is etymologically distinct from the allative un, which varies dialectally Nakagawa (2024: 301–302). The genitive construction is treated in detail in Chapter 46 (Adnominal Possession: Double Marking and the Appositive Construction).

53.3 Postpositional adverbs

Nakagawa organizes the postpositional adverbs into two etymological strata Nakagawa (2024: 280–282). The first, originally adverbial forms (本来型), includes pakno ‘until, as far as’, os ‘after’, koraci ‘like, as if’, and epitta ‘throughout’. The second, derived from transitive verbs (他動詞転換型), includes ani ‘with, by means of’ (instrumental), tura ‘together with’ (comitative), kari ‘through, via’ (perlative), akkari ‘more than’, eun ‘to(ward)’ (animate allative), and hekote ‘facing’. The verb-origin class retains the structural memory of its source: these forms take the transitive-object person prefix (en=akkari 'more than me', i=os 'after me') Satō (2008: 34–36).

The contrast between case-particle peka and postpositional-adverb kari is a key diagnostic for the two-class split. peka requires a ⟨place⟩-type noun (kim or peka 'through the mountains'); kari takes any nominal and does not require the locative noun or (ruyka kari 'across the bridge', puyar kari 'through the window') Nakagawa (2024: 282). The test sentence from Satō also illustrates that kari heads a full motion event without any locative noun:

The limitative pakno ‘until, as far as’ sets a terminal boundary — spatial or degree — on the action of its clause:

The instrumental ani ‘with, by means of’ is the standard tool-marking device, corresponding to Japanese で in this function. The comitative tura ‘together with’ is among the most frequent items in the corpus Nakagawa (2024: 280–282) and may head an independent motion-clause constituent (macihi tura ku=ek 'I came with (my) wife'). The distinction between animate-goal eun and place-goal un mirrors Satō's minimal pair: Satporo un requires the place-name (*unarpe un is ill-formed), whereas unarpe eun 'to auntie' is well-formed because eun is a postpositional adverb Satō (2008: 34–35).

53.4 The locative noun or and the ⟨place⟩ requirement

The ⟨place⟩ requirement of the four local case particles is satisfied by a small closed class of locative nouns (位置名詞) that derive the internal spatial structure of a referent. or ‘interior, place-of’ (long form oro ‘interior, place-of’) is the most general: it maps any common noun to its associated location or interior. Satō 2021 documents its distributional range in Chitose in detail Satō (2021). The case particle ta fuses with basic or to give otta; the longer oro stays separate (oro ta) Nakagawa (2024: 297).

Other locative nouns include ka ‘top, surface of’ (upper surface: ni ka ta 'onto the tree'), un ‘interior, inside of’ (interior — this un is a locative noun distinct from both the allative particle and the adnominal particle), soy ‘outside of’ (exterior: cise soy ta 'outside the house'), kes ‘end, tip of’, and poka ‘bottom, lower side of’. These interact with the affiliative/concept-form morphology: a locative noun heading a possessed ⟨place⟩ phrase takes the affiliative suffix that marks inalienable possession, because locative nouns are inalienably related to their host noun Nakagawa (2024: 241).

A community discussion (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord 2024-11-09) highlights a distributional consequence of the ⟨place⟩ requirement: the existential verb an ‘exist (intransitive)’ requires a locative noun before the case particle (A B or ta an 'A exists at/in B'), while the two-argument verb un ‘belong to’ (homophonous with the allative particle) takes a bare nominal (A B un 'A belongs to B'). This is corroborated by Nakagawa's analysis of adnominal un as etymologically a two-argument predicate rather than a case particle Nakagawa (2024: 301–302); aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹corpus-confirmed›.

53.5 Case or adposition? The analytical question

Whether ta / wa / un / peka constitute a local-case system or are better analyzed as postpositions turns on how one weighs three distributional facts against one morphophonological one.

The case-system argument rests on three properties Nakagawa (2024: 296–303); Nakagawa (2022: 473–475). First, the four particles form a closed paradigm organized around locative semantic primitives (at / from / toward / through) that parallels local-case inventories in languages with overt case morphology. Second, the particles alternate on the single place-word hunak ('where') — hunak ta 'where-at', hunak wa 'from where', hunak un 'to where' — exactly as case suffixes do in case-marking languages. Third, the allative particle shows regular dialectal allomorphy (un / en / (e)ne) that patterns as suppletive morphology rather than distinct lexical items.

The adposition argument notes that the particles remain phonologically independent words, never cliticize to their hosts, and that the ⟨place⟩ requirement is satisfied by a separate, grammatically active head noun (or) rather than by the noun itself taking an affix Satō (2008: 34–36); Refsing (1986: 109). The case label adopted by Nakagawa and Satō is therefore a functional/semantic label, not a morphological one: these are postpositions that constitute a local-case subsystem by virtue of their paradigmatic organization and the ⟨place⟩ selection constraint ‹contested›.

53.6 Motion-event encoding

Hokkaido Ainu has a substantial set of motion verbs that lexicalize direction, deictic orientation, and vertical or coastal dimension. The most basic Saru–Chitose pair is arpa ‘go (singular)’ (go, singular subject) and oman ‘go (Chitose/north)’ (go, in northern and eastern dialects); the suppletive plurals are paye ‘go (plural)’ and arpa ‘go’'s own plural form. For 'come', the singular is ek ‘come (singular)’ with suppletive plural arki ‘come (plural)’.

Beyond these general verbs, a lexical set encodes deictic path-direction: san ‘go seaward, go down (out)’ (move seaward / downhill / out to the open), yan ‘go inland, go up’ (move inland / uphill), ahun ‘enter’ (enter an enclosed space), rikin ‘go up, ascend’ (ascend vertically), ran ‘come down, descend’ (descend), soyne ‘go outside’ (go out/outside), and repun ‘go out to sea’ (go out to sea). Each of these lexicalizes a specific path-direction in the verb stem itself. Nakagawa 2024 treats these as a distinct lexical class on account of their suppletive number alternants and their complementary distribution with postpositional arguments Nakagawa (2024: 298–299).

A motion clause typically combines one of these path-encoding verbs with a postpositional phrase that specifies the Source (ablative wa) or Goal (allative un / locative ta):

Path through a specific route is marked by the postpositional adverb kari (for a single passage point or linear route) or the case particle peka (for a spread area). When both a direction verb and a perlative phrase appear together, the verb encodes the terminal direction while the perlative phrase encodes the route:

The morphological alternation between the stem forms of direction verbs is itself a coding device for motion: nukopoli notes that motion verbs characteristically show a -n / -p stem alternation (san/sap, yan/yap, ahun/ahup, ran/rap, rikin/rikip), where -p is cognate with the formal noun pa, though the etymology of -n remains unsettled aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, 2026-05-18) ‹speculative›. The causative of rikin ‘go up’ is uniquely rikinka; *rikipka is unattested, suggesting the -n stem is the causative base aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, 2026-04-27) ‹corpus-confirmed›.

53.7 The Talmy typology — verb-framing and path lexicalization

Talmy's distinction between verb-framed languages (where Path is encoded in the main verb) and satellite-framed languages (where Path is in a satellite and Manner in the verb) provides a useful frame for locating the HA system (Talmy 2000). The HA data are consistent with verb-framed organization at the lexical core — the path-direction verbs san, yan, ahun, rikin, and ran all lexicalize specific Path values in the verb stem — while the postpositional system adds goal/source precision through the un / wa / ta case particles and contributes a separate perlative specification through peka / kari.

What makes the Ainu system typologically mixed is that the perlative particles function as path-specifying satellites — they add information about the route that is not in the verb stem — while the goal and source particles function as standard local-case markers that any language, verb-framed or satellite-framed, may employ. A manner verb like ekimne ‘hunt (going hunting)’ can occur with a perlative phrase (ne kenas or peka ekimne=an kor) in a way that resembles satellite framing, but the path-specialized verbs such as san and ahun carry Path in the verb itself. The precise typological placement of Ainu within the Talmy framework depends on which lexical stratum is taken as primary, and the accessible sources do not settle this as an explicit research claim ‹speculative›.

The interaction of postpositions with noun incorporation is treated in Chapter 90 (Oblique Incorporation and the Syntactic-vs-Lexicalist Debate); argument realization and the role of postpositional phrases in oblique positions are examined in Chapter 94 (Pro-Drop, (Non)configurationality, and the Pronominal-Argument Debate).

53.8 Dialect variation in the allative

The allative particle is the most dialect-variable of the five case particles. Nakagawa maps three main reflexes across Hokkaido Nakagawa (2024: 302, §9.2.2):

Nakagawa traces the historical sequence as ne > ene > en > un, with the translative/copula ne the ultimate source Nakagawa (2024: 302). The reanalysis of ne from a translative into an allative marker is plausible as a goal-marking grammaticalization, but the intermediate stages are not uniformly attested and the direction of the change has not been independently demonstrated ‹speculative›.

The adnominal un ('of, belonging to') does not participate in this variation: it is the same un in all dialects, including those that use en or ne for the allative. Nakagawa takes this pan-HA uniformity as the strongest evidence that the two un's are etymologically distinct, with adnominal un deriving from the two-argument possession verb rather than from any locative source Nakagawa (2024: 301–302) ‹consensus›. Interrogative-strategy uses of the allative (ney un 'to where' in eastern dialects, as opposed to hunak un in western ones) are examined in Chapter 144 (Interrogative Strategies, Question Particles, and Evidential Questions).