A Grammar of Hokkaido Ainu

Contents

Part I — The Language and Its Setting

• 1 Aims, Scope, and Design Philosophy of This Grammar What this reference grammar covers, whom it is for, and the integrated corpus-quantified, typologically-scored, diachronically-grounded method that distinguishes it from prior grammars.
• 2 A Typological Profile of Hokkaido Ainu A condensed bird's-eye sketch of the language's structural type, serving as a roadmap to the granular chapters that follow.
• 3 The Ainu People, Their Homeland, and History The ethnonym, geography, society, and contact history that frame the language and its present endangerment.
• 4 The Sociolinguistic Situation: Endangerment and Revitalization The present state of Hokkaido Ainu — language shift, speaker estimates, documentation, and the revitalization movement, including new speakers and standardized 'neo-Ainu'.
• 5 The Genetic Position of Ainu: Isolate Status and Macro-Comparison Controversies Ainu as a language isolate, and a methodologically explicit survey of the contested macro-relationship and deep-contact proposals.
• 6 The History of Ainu Language Description and Previous Research A periodized historiography of Ainu linguistics from Edo-period records to the modern typological and corpus-computational turn, situating this grammar in that lineage.

Part II — Sources, Conventions, Glossing, and Orthography

• 7 Written Sources: Grammars, Dictionaries, and the Philological Record The book-length descriptive tradition, lexicography, and Edo-period manuscript sources underpinning the grammar, with an audit of works that must be cited but are physically absent.
• 8 The Oral-Literature Corpus and Spoken-Language Data The annotated oral-narrative text editions, recorded conversation, and audio archives that supply the grammar's connected-discourse examples, treated as a genre-tagged quantifiable corpus.
• 9 The Dialect Sample and the Corpus-Quantification Method Which Hokkaido dialects are sampled, how Sakhalin/Kuril contrast is framed, and exactly how the grammar computes and reports corpus frequencies.
• 10 Interlinear Glossing, Abbreviations, and Citation Conventions How to read the grammar's examples — the Leipzig-based interlinear format, morpheme segmentation, the gloss and abbreviation inventory, and the source-attribution sigla.
• 11 The Latin Phonemic Transcription The canonical romanization adopted as the grammar's primary script — its phoneme-to-grapheme mapping and conventions for /c/, the glottal stop, accent, and capitalization.
• 12 Katakana Orthography and the Extended Small-Kana Codas The katakana writing of Ainu — the syllabary mapping, the extended small-kana coda letters, the modern normative standard, and historical kana systems.
• 13 Cyrillic and Multi-Script Rendering The Cyrillic transcription of Ainu in the Russian and Sakhalin tradition and the interoperability of Latin, katakana, and Cyrillic renderings.
• 14 Orthographic Standardization and the Word-Division Problem The competing romanization norms, the unresolved question of where word boundaries fall, and the spacing and hyphenation conventions this grammar adopts.

Part III — Segmental Phonetics, Phonology, and Phonotactics

• 15 The Consonant Inventory and Its Phonetic Realization The twelve-consonant system /p t k c s m n r w y h/ (plus glottal stop), with instrumental detail on stop VOT, the affricate /c/, and intervocalic lenition.
• 16 The Vowel Inventory and Vowel Realization The five-vowel triangular system /a e i o u/, the absence of phonemic length in Hokkaido, and allophonic centralization/devoicing.
• 17 /s/ and the s ~ š Palatalization Alternation The allophonic [s]~[ʃ] alternation before and after /i/ and word-finally (Saru sisam vs šišam), its conditioning, and its dialect distribution.
• 18 The Rhotic /r/ and Coda-r The single rhotic phoneme (flap [ɾ]) with positional allophones, and coda /r/ as the most morphophonologically active segment of the language.
• 19 The Laryngeals: Glottal Stop, /h/, and the Final-h Question The laryngeal consonants: the glottal stop as obligatory-onset filler versus phoneme, onset and coda /h/ with coda-h neutralization, and the word-final -h controversy and its Sakhalin vowel-length reflex.
• 20 Syllable Structure, Phonotactics, and Word-Edge Constraints The canonical (C)V(C) syllable and obligatory onset, the permitted-coda inventory and onset/coda asymmetry, heterosyllabic clusters, and word-edge constraints including the citation-vs-combining shape mismatch (loanword adaptation treated in Part XXI).
• 21 Glides, Vowel Hiatus, and the Diphthong Question The phonemic-vs-epenthetic status of /w/ and /y/, glide epenthesis resolving vowel hiatus, and the analysis of ay/uy/oy/aw/iw/ew as coda-glide (VC) sequences rather than true diphthongs.

Part IV — Prosody and the Pitch-Accent System

• 22 The Pitch-Accent Placement Rule and the Accented/Accentless Dialect Split States the synchronic high-pitch placement generalization and divides Hokkaido into accented and accentless dialect classes.
• 23 The Prosodic Unit and the Accent-versus-Tone Analysis The theoretical analysis of the system: what bears prominence and whether Ainu prosody is culminative accent or a tonal melody.
• 24 Lexical/Contrastive Accent and Minimal Pairs How much accent is rule-derived versus lexically specified, demonstrated through pitch-only minimal and near-minimal pairs.
• 25 Accent in Compounds and under Affixation and Cliticization How prosodic-word formation reorganizes accent in compounds and when affixes and clitics attach.
• 26 Phrasal and Utterance Intonation Intonational contours above the word: declarative vs interrogative tunes, phrasing, and an f0 corpus study.

Part V — Morphophonology and Sandhi

• 27 Assimilation and Cluster Simplification: Coda /r/, Nasals, and Clusters Regressive assimilation of coda /r/ (the most active sandhi trigger) and place assimilation of coda nasals, together with heterosyllabic cluster simplification, degemination, and juncture gemination across morpheme, compound, and word boundaries.
• 28 Glide Epenthesis and Vowel-Hiatus Resolution Insertion of [w]/[y] transitional glides to break vowel hiatus at affixal, compound, and phrasal junctures, and the underlying-vs-epenthetic glide question at the morphophonology–phonetics interface.
• 29 Citation vs Combining Stem Shapes and Support Vowels The systematic mismatch between a morpheme's citation (concept) shape and its bound combining shape — final-consonant support vowels, stem-final truncation, and consonant alternations exposed only under affixation or compounding.
• 30 Personal-Affix Junctural Sandhi, =an/a= Allomorphy, and Connected-Speech Reduction The junctural sandhi triggered by personal affixes (ku= before vowels, en=, un=, ci=, eci=), the =an/-an and a=/an= allomorphy as a morphophonological problem, and casual-register contraction, elision, and cliticization.
• 31 Reduplication Phonology and Rule Interaction Base-copy templates in ideophones, intensives, and pluractionals, and how reduplication interacts with the assimilation and epenthesis processes to diagnose rule ordering and the morphology–phonology interface.

Part VI — Word Classes and Nominal Morphology

• 32 The Word-Class Inventory and the Noun/Verb Bipartition The full parts-of-speech inventory of Hokkaido Ainu, the dominant noun/verb split, the morphological and distributional diagnostics that define each class, and noun↔verb category conversion.
• 33 Nominal Subclasses and Obligatorily-Possessed (Bound) Nouns The internal taxonomy of nouns — concrete vs abstract, common vs proper, and the class of 'incomplete'/bound nouns that cannot stand without a possessor.
• 34 The Formal / Defective Noun Set (ruwe, hawe, siri, humi, hi, pe, kur) The closed set of bound 'formal' nouns that head nominalized and evidential constructions, defined here as a morphosyntactic subclass with shared diagnostics.
• 35 Verbal Subclasses: A Valence-Based Word-Class Taxonomy A word-class-level survey of verb subclasses by valence — intransitive (agentive vs patientive), transitive, ditransitive, and 'complete/incomplete' verbs — with detailed transitivity deferred to Part X.
• 36 The 'No Adjective Class' Thesis: Property Concepts as Stative Verbs Why pirka, poro, and other property words are analysed as stative intransitive verbs rather than adjectives, and whether any residual adjectival/quality-noun subclass survives.
• 37 Derivational Morphology on Nouns: Diminutive, Augmentative, and Size Modification Noun-internal derivation, principally the diminutive -po and augmentative/evaluative strategies, plus the pon/poro size-modifier boundary between morphology and syntax.
• 38 Noun–Noun Compounding: Headedness, Linking, and Semantics Productive N-N compound formation, its headedness and morphophonological linking, and the semantic typology of compounds, drawn from the dedicated Ainu compound-noun literature.
• 39 Deverbal and Denominal Noun Derivation (Lexical Nominalizer Morphology) The morphology of forming nouns with -p/-pe, -i/-hi, and -kur, treated here as lexical word-formation, with syntactic nominalization/relativization deferred to Part XVI.
• 40 Nominal Number: Transnumerality, -utar, and the Locus of Plurality The nominal number system — bare-noun general number/transnumerality, the human pluralizer -utar/utar(i), and the division of labour between nominal and verbal plurality.
• 41 The Structure of the Noun Phrase NP-internal constituent order and modification: the order of demonstratives, numerals/quantifiers, relative clauses, and adnominal modifiers relative to the head noun, apposition, determination without articles, NP-internal coordination, and recursion.

Part VII — Possession and the Affiliative System

• 42 The Alienable/Inalienable Split and Possessive Classification Hokkaido Ainu's binary possessive split — obligatorily possessed inalienable nouns vs. periphrastically possessed alienable nouns — its semantic classes, gradience, and place on the alienability-typology map.
• 43 Concept Form vs. Affiliative (Possessed) Form The functional opposition between the bare concept form (概念形) and the affiliative/possessed form (所属形), and the rule that inalienable nouns are obligatorily affiliative when possessed.
• 44 Morphophonology of the Affiliative Suffix and Echo/Copy Vowels The vowel-copy mechanism producing echo/release vowels and the affiliative paradigm (-hV, -ihi, -uhu, -V): copy directionality, class membership, the phonological-vs-lexical conditioning dispute, and the internal-reconstruction source of -hV.
• 45 Adnominal Possession: Double Marking and the Appositive Construction NP-internal possession marked by a personal possessor prefix plus the affiliative suffix (ku= sapa-ha 'my head'), and the appositive/juxtaposed possessor-NP construction (sisam kotanuhu).
• 46 External Possession and Possessor Raising Constructions in which the possessor of an (inalienable) noun is realized as a core clausal argument (en=…sik 'my eye'), and their relation to possessor-stranding noun incorporation.
• 47 Kinship and Honorific Possession Idiosyncrasies of kinship-term possession (irregular/suppletive affiliatives, vocatives) and honorific possession that marks esteemed possessors via the indefinite/fourth person.

Part VIII — Pronouns, Demonstratives, Postpositions, and Numerals

• 48 Personal, Reflexive, and Emphatic Pronouns The free/independent personal pronouns and their emphatic/contrastive use alongside the obligatory bound affixes, plus the reflexive and emphatic 'self' nominals used as NP arguments, kept distinct from the verbal reflexive prefix (Part XI).
• 49 Demonstratives, Anaphora, and Definiteness The exophoric demonstrative distance system, the anaphoric/recognitional 'aforementioned' demonstrative, and definiteness in an article-less language.
• 50 Interrogative, Indefinite, and Negative-Polarity Pro-forms The interrogative word set and content-question syntax, and the indefinite/negative-polarity series built on interrogative + ka, including their licensing across affirmative and negative contexts (scope/licensing detailed in Part XVI).
• 51 Relational and Spatial (Locative) Nouns and Their Possessed Forms The obligatorily-possessed relational/spatial noun system (or, ka, corpok, sam, tum...), the first-/second-class locative split, the affiliative forms of these nouns, and or's drift toward a general locative; a bridge to the postpositional case system.
• 52 Postpositions, Local Case, Motion Events, Comitative, and Instrumental Postpositions proper and the local-case relations they encode, motion-event/path encoding, and comitative tura and instrumental ani/ari on the postposition-to-applicative continuum.
• 53 The Vigesimal Numeral System The base-20 cardinal numeral system, its subtractive/additive arithmetic morphosyntax, and its diachrony.
• 54 Numeral Classifiers, Ordinals, and Quantifier Syntax Numeral classifiers, derived numeral categories, and the syntax of quantification and quantifier float.

Part IX — The Verb: Structure, Transitivity, and Verbal Number

• 55 The Verb Word and Its Position-Class Template The internal architecture of the Ainu verb word as an ordered sequence of prefix, stem, and suffix position classes.
• 56 Transitivity, Valence Classes, and Ambitransitivity Lexical classification of verbs by valence (intransitive agentive/patientive, transitive, ditransitive, complete/incomplete) and the system of labile (ambitransitive) verbs and morphological transitivity pairs (有対).
• 57 Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa The closed set of suppletive singular/plural verb stems and the plural suffix -pa: controller arguments, participant-vs-event number, double marking, and the agreement-vs-pluractional debate.
• 58 Light Verbs, Pro-Verbs, and the Auxiliary-Verb Construction The 'do' pro-verbs ki/iki, the structural support uses of ne and an, and the general auxiliary-verb (complex-predicate) construction.
• 59 Denominal and Deverbal Verb Derivation Non-valency processes that build verbs from nouns and from other verbs, including verb-verb compounding and noun/verb conversion.
• 60 The Adverbializer -no and Adverb Formation from Verbs The suffix -no deriving manner/degree adverbs from stative (property) verbs, set against related adverb-forming strategies.

Part X — The Personal-Affix System and Alignment

• 61 Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms The master chapter laying out the whole personal-affix system — the four 'persons', the subjective (A/S) vs objective (O) sub-paradigms, prefix vs suffix exponents, and the terminological wars.
• 62 First- and Second-Person Singular Affixes (ku=/en=, e=/e=) The SAP-singular core: 1sg subjective ku= vs objective en=, and 2sg e= (syncretic across A/S/O), with their morphophonology and distribution.
• 63 First-Person Plural and the Clusivity Question (ci=/=as, un=) The exclusive 1pl set — subjective ci=/=as and objective un= — and the contested inclusive/exclusive opposition with the indefinite person.
• 64 The eci= Portmanteau (1A→2O) and Second-Person Plural Syncretism The cumulative eci= exponent encoding a 1sg subject acting on a 2nd-person object, and its syncretism with the 2pl subject/object marker eci=.
• 65 Object Indexing: Monotransitive and Ditransitive Clauses How transitive and three-place verbs index their object(s) via the objective affix set, the subject/object indexing asymmetries, and the secundative-vs-indirective alignment of ditransitive indexing.
• 66 The Indefinite/Fourth Person: Forms, Reference, and Agent-Defocusing The morphology of the indefinite person (a=/an=/=an, i=) and its referential range — generic 'one', inclusive 'we', definite fourth-person reference — and its agent-defocusing 'passive'/impersonal use with the does-Ainu-have-a-passive debate.
• 67 Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person The indefinite/fourth person used to refer respectfully to esteemed humans and kamuy, and as the self-reference device of the first-person narrator in oral literature (the hero's 'I'); the affix-paradigm facts of these uses, with full discourse deployment in Part XIX.
• 68 The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering The ordering of subject and object personal affixes relative to each other, to valency prefixes, and to the verb stem — the personal-affix portion of the verb template.
• 69 Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement How the personal affixes interact with number marking — the -pa plural, the =as suffix, and agreement resolution across A, S, and O.
• 70 The Split-Intransitive (Active–Stative) Core The foundational alignment fact: intransitive subjects split between the agentive (A-set) and patientive (O-set) exponents, and the Split-S vs Fluid-S question.
• 71 Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate How the 1sg and indefinite cells show distinct A/S/O exponents (tripartite) against the accusative readings of other cells, and the system-wide synthesis — hierarchical/inverse vs active-stative vs tripartite — including ditransitive and clause-type alignment.

Part XI — Valency, Voice, and Noun Incorporation

• 72 Valency, Voice, and Noun Incorporation: Overview The architecture of the valency-changing system: the inventory of operations (causatives, the e-/ko-/o- applicatives, antipassive, reflexive, reciprocal, middle/anticausative, and noun incorporation) and how they compose, stack, and order on the verb.
• 73 The Morphological Causative -re / -e / -te The productive transitivizing causative suffix and its stem-conditioned allomorphy -re/-e/-te, encoding direct/manipulative causation.
• 74 The Transitivizer -ka and Lexical Valency Pairs The transitivizer/causative -ka on stative bases, and the system of labile and suppletive causative–inchoative verb pairs.
• 75 Causee Marking, Ditransitive and Double Causatives How causativization of transitives builds three-place frames, the marking/indexing of the causee, and double causatives.
• 76 The Permissive/Sociative Causative -yar The indirect/permissive causative -yar 'let/have someone do' and the directive-vs-sociative split it forms with -re/-e/-te.
• 77 The Applicative System: Overview and the Preverb-vs-Applicative Debate Bugaeva's reanalysis of e-/ko-/o- as applicatives promoting obliques to object, with the diagnostics and the terminological controversy.
• 78 The e- Applicative The e- applicative promoting content/theme, instrument, reason and 'about/concerning' obliques to object.
• 79 The ko- Applicative The ko- applicative promoting goal/recipient, comitative and adversative ('to/with/against') obliques to object.
• 80 The o- Applicative The o- applicative promoting locative/source/goal ('at, from, into') obliques, the spatial applicative, and allied spatial valency operators.
• 81 Applicative Stacking, Ordering, and the Feeding of Relativization How multiple applicatives stack and order, and how applicative promotion extends the relativization accessibility hierarchy and feeds incorporation.
• 82 The Antipassive / Detransitive i- The prefix i- 'something/someone' absorbing the object and detransitivizing, with the antipassive-vs-incorporation debate and its origin.
• 83 The Reflexive yay- The reflexive prefix yay- 'self', its A/O coreference and detransitivization, and its autobenefactive/emotive extensions.
• 84 The Reflexive-Possessive si- and the yay-/si- Division The prefix si- 'oneself / one's own / by itself' and its division of labor with yay- in argument identification.
• 85 The Reciprocal u- The reciprocal prefix u- 'each other/mutually', its collective/associative readings, and its interaction with plurality.
• 86 Middle, Anticausative, and the (Non-)Passive Question Middle/spontaneous and anticausative uses of si-/yay- and detransitives, and whether the a=/an= indefinite-agent construction constitutes a passive.
• 87 Object (Patient) Noun Incorporation Productive object incorporation (N+V → intransitive), its diagnostics, and its interaction with the antipassive and valency prefixes.
• 88 Subject Incorporation and Possessor-Stranding Subject incorporation with unaccusative verbs (sik-pirka 'eyes-be.good') and the possessor-stranding pattern — the classic Type IV test case.
• 89 Oblique Incorporation and the Syntactic-vs-Lexicalist Debate Adverbial/oblique incorporation, its feeding of relativization, and the central syntactic-NI vs lexical-compounding controversy.

Part XII — The Simple Clause and Nonverbal Predication

• 90 Basic Constituent Order and Head-Final Syntax Rigid verb-final (S)OV clause order and pervasive head-finality, scored against Greenbergian word-order correlations.
• 91 Argument Realization: Affix Indexing and Free NP Order Grammatical relations encoded by bound person affixes rather than case or fixed position, with free, pragmatically governed NP order.
• 92 Pro-Drop, (Non)configurationality, and the Pronominal-Argument Debate Argument ellipsis and null anaphora, and whether the bound affixes are the true arguments (Jelinek/Baker) — Ainu on the configurationality cline.
• 93 Oblique and Adjunct Syntax; Verbless and Presentational Clauses The syntax of postpositional/relational-noun obliques and adjuncts, plus minor verbless and presentational clause types.
• 94 The Copula ne and Predicate-Nominal Clauses Equational and class-membership predication with the copula ne, its person indexing, and its disputed verb-vs-particle status.
• 95 Existential and Locational Clauses (an / oka) The existential/locational predicates an (SG) and oka (PL), their number suppletion, presentational use, and the isam negative.
• 96 Predicative Possession: kor, Existential Possession, and isam Clause-level 'have/belong' predication via transitive kor, existential-based possession, and negative isam, plus the noun-level affiliative-vs-kor choice for alienable nouns; placed on Stassen's predicative-possession typology and interfaced with the nominal affiliative system (Part VII).
• 97 Property-Concept (Adjectival) Predication without a Copula Predicate 'adjectives' as intransitive stative verbs taking person indexing — the clause-level consequence of the no-adjective-class thesis.
• 98 TAM, Evidentiality, and Negation on Nonverbal Predicates How copular and other nonverbal predicates host the full sentence-final aspect, evidential, and negation apparatus through ne.

Part XIII — Nominalization, Relativization, and Complementation

• 99 The Nominalizers -p/-pe and -i/-hi (Participant, Event, Place, Fact) The participant nominalizer -p/-pe ('the one that') and the abstract/event nominalizer -i/-hi ('the V-ing / place / time / fact that'): argument-role readings, the headless-relative continuum, internal clause TAM/person, and the insubordination of nominalized clauses.
• 100 Lexical-Head and Formal-Noun Nominalization (kur, uske, ruwe/hawe/siri/humi) Nominalization headed by lexical nouns (kur 'person', uske/usi 'place', ike) and by the grammaticalized formal-noun set (ruwe, hawe, siri, humi, hi, pe) acting as clause-nominalizing heads.
• 101 Relative Clauses: The Gap Strategy and the Accessibility Hierarchy The head-final, relativizer-less gap relative clause and the Keenan–Comrie accessibility hierarchy — subject/object relativize directly, obliques only after e-/ko-/o- applicative promotion — plus possessor, locative/temporal, and standard-of-comparison relativization.
• 102 Headless, Internally-Headed, and Noun-Modifying Clause Analyses The analytic question of whether Ainu adnominal clauses are externally-headed RCs, headless/internally-headed relatives, or a unified 'general noun-modifying clause' type.
• 103 Quotative Complementation and Reported Speech (sekor) The dominant complementation strategy: framing a (direct-form) clause with the quotative sekor under verbs of speech, cognition, and intention.
• 104 Nominalized Complements and Control/Raising Complement clauses formed by nominalization (hi, -i, ruwe) under perception, cognition, and evaluative predicates, and the control/raising diagnostics of same-subject complex predicates.
• 105 The kuni Complementizer and Purpose Complements The irrealis complementizer/nominalizer kuni and the purposive kus(u) / kuni ne, marking future-oriented complements of manipulation, desire, and purpose.

Part XIV — Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality

• 106 Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview The architecture of the TAM/modality system and how its pieces fit: tenselessness, the existential-aspect core, the phasal/iterative/habitual periphery, the directive/optative moods, and the modal field, with the boundaries to evidentiality and negation.
• 107 Tenselessness and the Time-Reference System Hokkaido Ainu lacks a grammatical tense category; temporal location is inferred from aspect, discourse anchoring, and temporal adverbs.
• 108 The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect The existential verbs an (SG)/oka (PL) recruited as aspectual auxiliaries unifying kor an and wa an under one 'existential aspect': the progressive/continuative kor an and the resultative-perfect wa an, with number agreement, aktionsart conditioning, and grammaticalization.
• 109 The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan) Postverbal a marks completion and anteriority ('already, have V-ed'), with reduplicated a…a and the anterior-stative aan.
• 110 The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an siri/siran-based forms express durative, ongoing situations framed as observable appearance.
• 111 Phasal, Iterative, and Habitual Aspect Inceptive and terminative phasal aspect via auxiliary verbs, plus iterative and habitual marking.
• 112 Imperative and Prohibitive (Directive Mood) Bare-stem imperatives, the -yan plural/polite imperative, and the iteki prohibitive form one directive-mood system.
• 113 Hortative, Optative, and Cohortative First-person hortative/cohortative built on =an plus clause-final particles, alongside optative and wish constructions.
• 114 The Desiderative rusuy Postverbal rusuy expresses 'want to' and desire, raising the verb-vs-auxiliary question central to the part.
• 115 Abilitative easkay / eaykap (Ability and Possibility) easkay 'be able to' and its lexicalized negative counterpart eaykap 'cannot' encode root ability and possibility.
• 116 Deontic Necessity and Obligation (kuni ne, kus ne) Necessity and obligation are expressed periphrastically via nominalized kuni ne / kunine and kus ne.
• 117 Epistemic Modality, Dubitative, Intentive, and Irrealis Probability nankor, the dubitative ya, intentive kusu ne, and counterfactual/irrealis interactions, plus the modal–evidential boundary.

Part XV — Evidentiality and Mirativity

• 118 The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema The architecture of the Ainu evidential system: a clause-nominalizing formal noun (ruwe/siri/hawe/humi) plus the copula ne/an encodes the speaker's source of information.
• 119 ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential The default assertive-evidential ruwe ne ('it is the trace/fact that'), marking inference from evidence or established fact, the most frequent and most grammaticalized term of the paradigm.
• 120 siri ne — the Direct-Perception / Situational Evidential siri ne ('it is the appearance/scene that'), marking directly observed situations and visible states, with a close interface to the siran situational-continuative and a mirative lean.
• 121 hawe ne — the Reportative / Hearsay Evidential hawe ne ('it is the voice/report that'), marking information acquired through speech or hearsay, distinct from but adjacent to the sekor quotative and reported-discourse system.
• 122 humi ne — the Non-Visual Sensory Evidential humi ne ('it is the sound/feeling that'), marking evidence from non-visual senses — non-verbal sound and bodily/internal sensation — and inference from such cues.
• 123 Mirativity, Evidential Scope, and Grammaticalization to Sentence-Final Particles System-level interactions: the evidential-to-mirative extension, evidential stacking and scope over negation and modality, aspect/perfect-based evidential strategies, and the cline from formal noun to sentence-final particle.

Part XVI — Negation

• 124 Standard Clausal Negation with somo The preverbal standard negator somo: its position, scope, periphrastic somo ki construction, and placement in symmetric/asymmetric negation typology.
• 125 Negative Existential and Possessive: isam isam as the suppletive negative counterpart of the existentials an/oka, its 'not have' possessive use, and the privative sak.
• 126 Negative Predicates of Ability and Cognition Lexically suppletive negative modal/cognition predicates — eaykap 'cannot', eramiskari 'not know how/never', erampewtek 'not understand' — versus analytic somo negation.
• 127 Negative-Polarity Indefinites and the Scope of Negation The ka-indefinite/NPI series under somo, negative concord, constituent vs clausal negation, and the negation of nominal predicates (somo ... ne).
• 128 The Prohibitive Subsystem: iteki and Negative Directives The dedicated prohibitive iteki, its asymmetry with declarative negation, apprehensive 'lest' uses, and links to the imperative/hortative system.

Part XVII — Clause Linkage and Adverbial Subordination

• 129 Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory Framing chapter mapping Ainu clause combining onto the coordination–cosubordination–subordination continuum and laying out the full inventory of clause-linking morphemes.
• 130 Sequential wa and Clause Chaining The default connective wa 'and (then)', multi-clause event chains, and the culminative linker aine, disambiguated from the homophonous resultative/perfect wa.
• 131 The hine/akusu Contrast and Switch-Reference-Like Linkage The sequential connectives hine and akusu and the long-running debate over whether they encode same-/different-subject (switch-reference) or discourse (un)expectedness.
• 132 Simultaneous kor 'while' and Overlapping-Event Clauses The conjunctive particle kor marking temporal overlap, distinguished from the homophonous possessive verb kor and the progressive auxiliary kor an.
• 133 Conditional, Temporal, and Concessive Clauses The yak(un)/ciki conditionals, their temporal 'when' uses and realis/irrealis split, and the morphologically related concessives yakka 'even if' and korka 'although'.
• 134 Causal and Purpose Clauses (kusu) The polyfunctional kusu/gusu marking reason 'because' and purpose 'in order to', its formal-noun origin, and its division of labour with the kuni purpose complementizer.
• 135 Manner and Degree Adverbial Clauses Manner clauses, the clause-linking -no adverbializer, and degree/extent clauses (pakno 'to the extent that'), framed against Ainu comparison strategies.
• 136 Tail-Head Linkage and Narrative Clause Cohesion Recapitulative tail-head linkage, the discourse connective orowa(no) 'and then (from there)', and the anaphoric clause-linkage that structures Ainu oral narrative.

Part XVIII — Information Structure, Sentence-Final Particles, and Minor Classes

• 137 Reference Tracking and Argument Continuity How participants are tracked across clauses: zero anaphora and pro-drop, person marking, the indefinite/fourth person as a tracking device, demonstrative/anaphoric reference, and switch-reference-like clause linkage (hine/akusu), drawn together as one system.
• 138 Topic and Focus Marking: anak(ne), patek, and ka The topic/contrastive-topic particle anak~anakne and the focus-sensitive particles patek 'only' and ka 'also/even': thematic vs contrastive topic, restrictive/additive/scalar focus, and the NPI use of ka.
• 139 Cleft, Pseudocleft, and Nominalization-Based Focus Identificational and predicate-focus constructions built on nominalization plus the copula (…p ne, …hi ne) and their relation to the evidential schema.
• 140 Pragmatic Word-Order Permutation, Dislocation, and Argument Ellipsis Departures from basic verb-final order for information-structural ends — scrambling, left/right dislocation, afterthought, and given-argument ellipsis.
• 141 The Sentence-Final Particle System and Illocutionary Force The inventory of clause-final particles (na, wa, ya, nankor, …) encoding assertion, emphasis, confirmation, and softening, and their grammaticalization from formal nouns.
• 142 Interrogative Strategies, Question Particles, and Evidential Questions Polar and content questions — the particles ya/he, in-situ wh-words, biased/confirmational questions — integrated with the evidential interrogative/confirmational paradigm (ruwe un?, hawe ya?, siri ya?) and its evidence-source 'flip' from speaker to addressee.
• 143 Gendered Speech and Pragmatic Registers Sex-of-speaker and register differences in final particles, interjections, and politeness, and the documentation gaps surrounding them.
• 144 Adverbs, Degree Words, and Comparison Strategies The adverb word-class, the -no adverbializer, intensifiers, and the periphrastic encoding of comparison (Ainu has no dedicated comparative).
• 145 Conjunctions and Discourse Connectives NP-coordinating conjunctions (newa, tura) and clause-edge discourse connectives (orowano, nah …) as a minor class, distinct from the converbal clause-linkers of Part XVII.
• 146 Interjections, Response Words, Ideophones, and Sound Symbolism The expressive minor classes — interjections and conversational formulae, ideophones/mimetics, and size/intensity sound-symbolic gradation.

Part XIX — Discourse and the Grammar of Oral Literature

• 147 The Oral-Literature Genre System and Its Grammatical Signatures The taxonomy of Ainu oral-narrative genres and the bundle of grammatical features that indexes each one.
• 148 First-Person Narration, the Logophoric Fourth Person, and Reported Discourse The grammaticalized narrator viewpoint in sung epic and the logophoric/reported-speech system as deployed across genres.
• 149 The Sakehe Refrain, Verse Meter, and the Structure of Sung Verse The sakehe burden and the metrical/structural organization of sung genres as performance grammar: refrain types and placement, verse-line segmentation and syllable/mora-count meter, and melodic vs linguistic pitch (proto-accent reconstruction in Part XX).
• 150 Parallelism, Couplets, and Word-Pair Doublets Syntactic-semantic parallelism, the verse couplet, and lexical doublets analyzed as structural rhetoric rather than mere style.
• 151 The Elevated/Poetic Register: Archaic Morphology and Formulaic Diction The grammar and lexicon of the elevated (雅語) register — archaic forms, verse-restricted morphology, and fixed formulae.
• 152 Honorific, Ritual, and Taboo Registers Referent/addressee honorification, the language of prayer, and hunting/taboo avoidance speech as register-specific grammar.
• 153 Narrative TAM and Evidential Patterning by Genre Genre-quantified distribution of tense-aspect and the evidential clause-final system in connected narrative discourse.

Part XX — Diachrony, Reconstruction, and Dialectology

• 154 Proto-Ainu Reconstruction: Segments and Accent Classes Reconstruction of the Proto-Ainu consonant/vowel inventory and accent classes, the correspondence sets to modern Hokkaido reflexes, Shiratori's *ia revision of the palatalization account, the accented/accentless split, and the Sakhalin length to Hokkaido pitch correspondence.
• 155 The Final-h Problem and Its Sakhalin Vowel-Length Reflex The diachrony of word-final and coda -h, the Hokkaido final-h controversy, and its systematic correspondence to phonemic vowel length in Sakhalin Ainu.
• 156 Internal Reconstruction and Grammaticalization Pathways Internal reconstruction from synchronic morphophonemic alternations, together with the major grammaticalization clines that feed the modern grammar.
• 157 Hokkaido Dialect Classification and Dialectometry The internal dialect divisions of Hokkaido Ainu, the classification debate, and the new statistical/dialectometric reanalyses.
• 158 Hokkaido Dialect Microvariation: Phonology and Morphosyntax Inter-dialectal variation within Hokkaido in both phonology (s~š, coda treatment, accent-class membership) and morphosyntax (personal-affix forms, third-plural marking, plural strategies, evidential/causative inventories).
• 159 Lexical Dialectology and the Dialect Atlas Lexical microvariation across Hokkaido, the comparative dictionaries and Swadesh-style datasets, and the dialect atlas underpinning classification.
• 160 Sakhalin and Kuril Ainu: The External Comparison Systematic contrast of Hokkaido with Sakhalin (Enciw) Ainu and the fragmentary Kuril record, framing the dialect-vs-language question.

Part XXI — Language Contact and the Lexicon

• 161 Japanese Loanwords and Their Phonological Adaptation Lexical borrowing from Japanese — chronological strata, semantic domains, and numeral borrowing over the vigesimal base — together with the phonological nativization of loans (coda/cluster repair, segment mapping, accent assignment) as live evidence for the synchronic phonotactic grammar.
• 162 Ainu Loanwords and Toponymy in Japanese Ainu's imprint on Japanese — animal/fish/plant loanwords in standard and northern-dialect Japanese, and the Ainu (substrate) toponymy of Hokkaido and northern Honshu.
• 163 Northern Contact: Nivkh, Tungusic, and Manchu The Sakhalin/Amur contact zone — Nivkh and Tungusic (Uilta/Orok, Nanai)/Manchu lexical and structural contact, with Sakhalin Ainu as the principal locus.
• 164 Macro-Comparison and Deep-Contact Controversies A critical, method-driven survey of proposed external genetic relationships and deep-contact scenarios for Ainu, framed by borrowing-scale and areal typology.
• 165 Synopsis of Lexical-Semantic Fields A field-by-field synopsis of the Ainu lexicon — its semantic organization, the classified-dictionary tradition, and culturally salient vocabulary domains.

Part XXII — Glossed Texts

• 166 A Glossed Uwepeker (Prose Folktale) A complete uwepeker prose folktale presented in four-tier interlinear gloss with running grammatical commentary cross-referenced clause-by-clause to the analytic chapters.
• 167 Glossed Verse: A Yukar Heroic Epic and a Kamuy Yukar God-Song Two glossed verse texts — a yukar heroic-epic passage and a kamuy yukar divine self-narration with sakehe refrain — set side by side with comparative commentary on meter, refrain, and the first-person/logophoric narrator.
• 168 A Glossed Inonno-itak (Ritual Prayer) A ritual prayer (inonno-itak) text glossed and annotated, showcasing the elevated/honorific register, formulaic parallelism, and direct benedictive address to the kamuy.
• 169 A Glossed Everyday-Conversation Text A passage of recorded everyday conversation glossed and annotated to illustrate spontaneous spoken syntax, sentence-final particles, and connected-speech reduction.
• 170 A Glossed Sakhalin (Enciw) Text with Hokkaido Contrast A Sakhalin Ainu text glossed and annotated against Hokkaido norms, foregrounding phonemic vowel length, the final-h reflex, and divergent person, number, and negation morphology.

Part XXIII — Reference Apparatus (Back Matter)

• 171 Glossary of Grammatical Terms An alphabetical, validated glossary of the grammatical terminology used throughout the grammar, with trilingual equivalents and cross-references to the chapters that define each term.
• 172 Abbreviations and Glossing-Symbol Conventions The tables of interlinear-gloss abbreviations, morpheme-boundary symbols, and notation conventions used in the grammar, with a concordance reconciling divergent conventions across the source literature.
• 173 Consolidated References and Bibliography The unified, type-classified bibliography of all grammars, articles, text editions, and dictionaries consulted, with a critical apparatus flagging key works not directly available.
• 174 Index of Subjects An alphabetical topic and concept index keyed to chapter and section, with a parallel typological-feature sub-index for cross-linguistic look-up.
• 175 Index of Grammatical Morphemes and Affixes An exhaustive finding list of every bound morpheme, clitic, and grammatical particle, organized by form with gloss, class, dialect variants, and section reference, doubling as a reverse-lookup grammar dictionary.
• 176 Index of Cited Examples, Source Texts, and Dialects A citation index of every quoted example by source edition and locus, organized further by genre, narrator/transcriber, and dialect, cross-referenced to the glossed-texts corpus.

Back matter

• Abbreviations and conventions
• References