Chapter 134Simultaneous kor 'while' and Overlapping-Event Clauses

134.1 The form and its environments

The conjunctive particle kor ‘while, as (simultaneous)’ joins two finite clauses in Hokkaido Ainu and carries two distinct linking readings: a simultaneous reading ('while, as, at the same time as') and a habitual/factual conditional reading ('whenever, when habitually'). The same segment is also the transitive verb kor ‘have, possess’ 'have, possess', creating a three-way collision of forms that both Nakagawa and Ijäs flag explicitly Nakagawa (2024: 340, 347); Ijäs (2023). Word-class and linear position resolve the collision: the conjunctive particle follows a finite predicate and precedes the next clause; the possession verb carries its own person-index prefixes directly (ku=kor 'I have it', a=kor huci 'one's grandmother'). As a conjunctive particle, kor belongs to the bound post-predicate class (接続助詞) inventoried in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory).

Whole-corpus token counts place kor at approximately 29,300 occurrences (rank 5 in the aligned Hokkaido corpus), but that figure conflates the possession verb, the simultaneous particle, and the conditional reading, so the raw total is an upper bound on any single function ‹corpus-suggested› Nakagawa (2024: 340).

134.2 Overlapping events: the simultaneous reading

The simultaneous reading of kor signals that two events or states co-occur: the first predicate is ongoing while the second takes place, or both proceed together. Nakagawa's primary gloss is Japanese 〜しながら Nakagawa (2024: 340); Satō gives the same value for Chitose Satō (2008: 49).

Among the temporal-succession connectives of Saru, kor occupies a phase-specific slot. Nakagawa draws a three-way contrast according to the temporal phase of the first predicate Nakagawa (2024: 341):

Nakagawa notes that the phase account alone does not explain every distribution: the fixed collocation apkas wa arpa 'walk and go' resists *apkas kor arpa, suggesting that additional manner or cause semantics govern some wa collocations (Tamura 1972b: 152, via Nakagawa (2024: 342)). The no particle and its negation distribution are treated in Chapter 137 (Manner and Degree Adverbial Clauses); sequential wa belongs to Chapter 132 (Sequential wa and Clause Chaining).

The following example from Nakagawa's Saru materials shows the simultaneity construction in a narrative sequence. The silver knife descends (san) while gleaming (mikemike):

The simultaneous kor carries no same-subject requirement. Unlike Japanese 〜ながら, which requires coreferential subjects in both clauses, Ainu kor permits the two linked predicates to have different subjects. Satō demonstrates this with an example where the speaking subjects (mother and father) are distinct from the entity that acts in the matrix clause Satō (2008: 49–50); Ijäs makes the same observation, citing a Tamura example where the dancer and the looker are different persons Ijäs (2023):

Reference tracking across the chain relies on the obligatory person-index prefixes on each finite predicate. Ainu has no morphological switch-reference — no dedicated same-subject or different-subject converb morphology — as established in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory) and examined in Chapter 133 (The hine/akusu Contrast and Switch-Reference-Like Linkage). For the Shizunai cognate kane, Refsing observes a statistical tendency toward same-subject co-occurrence in her materials, with documented exceptions Refsing (1986: 250); no equivalent quantitative statement has been made for Saru kor ‹corpus-suggested›.

134.3 The progressive: kor followed by an existential

When the simultaneous kor is followed immediately by the existential verb an (singular) or oka (plural), the combination functions as the Ainu progressive: the event of the first predicate is in progress at the time of reference. Nakagawa gives the paradigmatic Saru form and glosses it 歩いている 'is walking' Nakagawa (2024: 340):

The progressive contrasts directly with the resultative-perfect wa an: where wa presents a result-state following completion of an action, kor an presents the action as still unfolding. This contrast follows directly from the temporal-phase distinction in the table above. The example below shows the progressive integrated into a clause where the attendant no marks a concurrent negated state:

The full distributional and frequency evidence for the kor an progressive, its contrast with wa an, and the eight-form aspectual paradigm as a whole are developed in Chapter 110 (The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect), which draws on Satō's dedicated Chitose aspect study (Satō 2006). The TAM system is surveyed in Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview). The cognate kane an continuative of Shizunai and the related siran forms are treated in Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an).

134.4 Habitual and factual conditional: the whenever reading

The second conjunctive reading of kor expresses general causation or habitual recurrence: whenever E1 obtains, E2 follows as a general truth or matter of routine. Satō characterizes this as 一般的因果関係 Satō (2009: 51); Nakagawa glosses it 〜すると（たびに） and gives as a stock example sironuman kor cikap utar iwak 'when it gets dark the birds go home' Nakagawa (2024: 347). The relationship is a general truth or a habitual pattern across occasions.

Satō's study of Ainu conditionals identifies a mood constraint on this reading: with a declarative matrix clause, the habitual kor expresses a general truth; for a one-off individual event it is restricted to wh-interrogative matrix clauses Satō (2009: 51). The contrast with the hypothetical conditional yakun is stark: yakun applies to one-time premises and takes any matrix mood, making it the broadest member of the system. The full conditional paradigm, mood constraints, and Satō's cross-linguistic comparison are set out in Chapter 135 (Conditional, Temporal, and Concessive Clauses).

The following Saru example from Nakagawa illustrates the habitual conditional in a narrative context. The sentence additionally presents all three homonymous readings of kor within three words: the first two instances are the possession verb (a=kor 'one's grandmother/grandfather'), and the third is the conditional particle:

A corpus narrative by 丸野和子 in the アイヌタイムズ shows both the habitual conditional and the progressive in a single clause, integrated with the V a V a ayne durative-reduplication pattern Nakagawa (2024: 346–347):

134.5 Dialect distribution and cognate forms

The two linking functions that Saru assigns to a single kor are distributed across separate particles in other Hokkaido varieties. Shizunai presents the clearest formal split:

In Shizunai, Refsing describes kane as the 'contemporal' conjunctionalizer — 'at the same time as' — and assigns konno to a separate 'sequential' slot covering inevitable consequence, closer to what Saru expresses with the habitual conditional kor Refsing (1986: 248–250). Nakagawa traces the Saru/Shizunai particle split to Tamura 1972b: 148 Nakagawa (2024: 342). The following Shizunai example — also cited in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory) — places the two Shizunai particles side by side:

The reduced Horobetsu/Kushiro form ko reflects the regular reduction of word-final r attested in other Hokkaido environments (e.g. kur 'person' → ku) and noted from 切替 2003: 313 by Nakagawa Nakagawa (2024: 348). The Shizunai kane an continuative and its relationship to the siran family of forms are taken up in Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an).

134.6 kor in derived particles

Two high-frequency conjunctive particles are built on kor and inherit its temporal semantics transparently.

korka ‘but, although (adversative)’, the adversative conjunctive particle, is formed as kor 'when' + ka 'even' = 'even when (X, nevertheless Y)' Nakagawa (2024: 351); Ijäs (2023). The etymology is stated consistently across Nakagawa, Satō, and Ijäs and is uncontested. Adversative korka is treated in Chapter 135 (Conditional, Temporal, and Concessive Clauses).

sekor ‘(quotative complementizer) ~と’, the quotative complementizer, is analysed as se 'say, make a sound' + kor 'while' = 'while saying / while making the sound of …', with the simultaneous value of kor still transparent in the etymology Nakagawa (2024: 470); Ijäs (2023). Community analysis corroborates this parsing as an asserted, well-grounded etymology (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024 aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026)). A further community-proposed analysis holds that sekor is a specifically Saru innovation and that the pan-dialectal ari/ani represents the older form — a hypothesis put forward by nukopoli (aynu-corpora Discord, 2024 aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026)) ‹contested›; the primary grammars read for this chapter do not settle the dialectal priority question. The framing function, person-switch mechanism, and dialect distribution of sekor are developed in Chapter 105 (Quotative Complementation and Reported Speech (sekor)).