Chapter 122siri ne — the Direct-Perception / Situational Evidential

122.1 Place in the evidential paradigm

The formal noun siri — the possessed form of sir ‘visible appearance, land, weather’ — is the direct visual evidential of Hokkaido Ainu. Combined with the copula ne it yields the declarative frame siri ne, glossed dir.vis by Dal Corso: a direct evidential whose information source is a situation accessible to sight Dal Corso (2018: 305–306). The full four-term paradigm and its nominalization-plus-copula architecture are set out in Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema); the present chapter treats siri ne and its indirect siblings siri an and siri ki. The reasoning-based term ruwe ne is treated in Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential); the non-visual sensory term in Chapter 124 (humi ne — the Non-Visual Sensory Evidential).

Within the reliability hierarchy, siri ne occupies the second position, below ruwe ne (knowledge/reasoning) and above humi ne and hawe ne Dal Corso (2018: 337). In Dal Corso's Hokkaido reference texts it supplies 149 tokens (6.68% of all evidential forms), against 1508 (67.56%) for ruwe ne; its indirect counterparts siri an (59 tokens, 2.64%) and siri ki (42 tokens, 1.88%) are less frequent still Dal Corso (2018: 72). Unlike ru ‘track, path’, whose evidential reflexes are confined to direct evidentiality in the southern dialects, sir ‘visible appearance, land, weather’ enters both direct and indirect evidentiality, yielding the three-member subfamily set out in the table below.

122.2 Morphology: siri is sir-i, 'the appearance of —'

The source noun sir covers a semantic cluster of visible and spatial referents: land, mountain, island, 'that area', and the observable appearance or state of something Tamura (1996: s.v. sir). The noun's polysemy — 'ground, surface, countenance, sheath' — noted by community analysts as unusually broad (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord 2023) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹corpus-confirmed› is consistent with Tamura's dictionary entry and with its distribution across compounds, place names, and weather predicates. The possessed form is sir-i, 'the appearance of —', which serves as the evidential formal noun Nakagawa (2024: 258, 391). Tamura notes explicitly that whether the concept form sir and the possessed form siri carry a usage or nuance distinction in the evidential function is unknown Tamura (1996: s.v. sir) ‹speculative›. The blocking of the extra syllable that suppresses *ruwehe and *humihi in evidential function does not apply here: siri already coincides with the regular possessed form Tamura (1996: s.v. ruwe, humi).

As a free noun, sir has low currency in Saru and Chitose — it appears mainly word-internally in weather and light-condition compounds (sir-pirka 'good weather', sir-kunne 'be dark', sir-peker 'be bright / dawn') and in place names such as Poro-sir (Horoshiri, 'big mountain') Nakagawa (2024: 391). The weather-compound use is the synchronic residue of the noun's meteorological-and-landscape origin and reinforces the evidential's visual-situational semantics. On the continuative and aspectual forms built on sir — including siran / siri=an 'pass (of time)' — see Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an).

122.3 Meaning: directly visible situation

The earliest grammarians classified siri ne as the 見説法, the 'sight-report mood': it asserts what the speaker directly observes. Chiri glosses it as "saying 'such-and-such is / has just happened' about a fact before one's eyes" Kindaichi & Chiri (1936); Hirosawa (2026: 65–66). The modern evidential framing preserves the core: Nakagawa defines siri ne as marking that the speaker's judgment rests on visual information Nakagawa (2024: 392), and Tamura gives it as 'used for conditions that can be seen' Hirosawa (2026: 67). Satō's question data refine the characterization: when the interrogative frame uses siri, the content nominalized is a process ongoing before the eyes — not a completed event or stable property Satō (2008: 134–135). Dal Corso's dir.vis gloss captures the same range: the copula ne signals an internal, speaker-anchored perspective on a visually accessed event, distinguishing siri ne from the external-perspective indirect forms Dal Corso (2018: 305–306, 313–315).

Two extensions of the basic visual reading arise in the corpus. Hirosawa cites an example in which siri ne predicates a future event not yet observed — a punishment that will happen — showing that the form can range over a situationally entailed, not merely currently perceived, state of affairs Hirosawa (2026: 70) ‹corpus-suggested›. And Dal Corso's dir.vis subsumes both ongoing direct perception and cases where visible evidence yields a near-certain situational inference; both are direct in the sense that the copula perspective is the speaker's own Dal Corso (2018: 305–306).

The contrast with ruwe ne on the same visual base is the hardest boundary in the system. Dal Corso leaves it explicitly unresolved: a sense-channel hierarchy fails to predict the choice, and he suspects a driver beyond elicitation Dal Corso (2018: 311–312, 335–336). Hirosawa's hypothesis — that siri profiles the raw visible appearance while ruwe profiles the knowledge extracted from it — is offered as a hypothesis (仮説), not a settled result Hirosawa (2026: 81, 89) ‹contested›. The double-evidential evidence bearing on the split is set out in the section on double evidentiality below.

122.4 The siri an polysemy

siri an is three-way ambiguous. The three readings are formally identical but contextually distinguished:

• Interrogative frame: siri (formal noun) + the existential an replacing the copula, forming a content question. The Kanazawa 1898 example Tokyo un paye=an siri an? 'Did you go to Tokyo?' illustrates this use Kanazawa (1898); Nakagawa (2024: 394). This is the interrogative-frame counterpart of declarative siri ne, parallel to ruwe an and hawe an in the same paradigm; see Chapter 144 (Interrogative Strategies, Question Particles, and Evidential Questions).
• Indirect visual / reasoning evidential (ind.rsn): an evidential with external, non-copular perspective, reporting an event visually or situationally accessible but not directly witnessed by the current speaker. Dal Corso places this reading higher in reliability than siri ki and notes that it systematically pairs with ruwe ne in double-evidential constructions — discussed in the section on double evidentiality below Dal Corso (2018: 306, 315–317, 325–327).
• Aspectual resultative / progressive: a periphrastic aspect form semantically close to wa an / kor an, expressing an unspecified or vaguely defined condition Tamura (2000: 186); Dal Corso (2018: 315–318). In this use siri an functions as a lexical predicate ('be like, appear, pass of time') and is not an evidential. The aspectual and continuative uses, including siran, are treated in Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an); the existential an itself in the existential and aspectual an.

The three-way ambiguity is described functionally in the sources consulted but lacks a unified syntactic account; Satō 2013's analysis of siri an as a polysemous aspectual-modal-evidential in Chitose is cited by Dal Corso but was not consulted directly Dal Corso (2018: 316) ‹speculative›. Discourse context and the presence or absence of a question word are the primary practical diagnostics.

siri ki (also contracted sirki) is the unambiguous indirect-visual form. Dal Corso glosses it ind.vis: an event visible in a distanced way or from a source other than the current speaker, the verb ki 'do' placing it in the external-perspective set alongside humi as and hawe as Dal Corso (2018: 306–307, 313–314). A Kayano (Biratori) narrative instance has a character's skilled cooking assessed by a bystander under sirki, expressing surprised indirect-visual perception Dal Corso (2018: 307).

122.5 Clause-final frames and illocution

siri participates in the four-slot illocutionary paradigm shared by all formal nouns Nakagawa (2024: 392–396):

A notably absent frame is the affirmative-answer construction: unlike ruwe un, there is no attested *siri un — the un-answer is restricted to ruwe in the sources consulted Nakagawa (2024: 396) ‹corpus-confirmed›. The polar-question reduction — bare siri without a following predicate — is an instance of insubordination: a nominalized clause pressed into main-clause function. Takahashi analyses the Tokachi cognate pattern as 脱従属節化 Takahashi (2013: 132). Negation operates inside the evidential, the verb negated before siri ne and the evidential scoping over the resulting proposition Nakagawa (2024: 393).

122.6 Predication type: the Tokachi stage-level constraint

Takahashi's Tokachi study (consultant: Sawai Tomeno, Honbetsu) establishes that the visual nominalizer is restricted to stage-level (imperfective, transient) predication. A passing scene — someone in the act of fleeing — takes the Tokachi cognate sin (concept-form allomorph of sir): kira sin ne nankor '(she) seems to be fleeing' (Takahashi 2013, ex. 5). An individual-level (permanent) property, even one visually accessible, takes ru instead — the unmarked member that imposes no predication-type restriction Takahashi (2013: 131–133). Among the four Tokachi nominalizers, only sir carries this restriction; hum, haw, and ru operate at both predication levels Takahashi (2013: 133) ‹consensus›.

Takahashi draws a parallel with the English perception-verb constraint on individual-level complements: a stage-/individual-level distinction that in English appears on the complement-type of the matrix verb, but in Ainu appears on the nominalizer itself Takahashi (2013: 133). The constraint corroborates siri ne's characterization as inherently tied to observable, imperfective situations. Satō's Chitose evidence points the same direction: in interrogatives, siri selects for processes ongoing before the eyes, not for stable properties Satō (2008: 134). Whether the Tokachi restriction is a local grammaticalization feature or a pan-Hokkaido tendency described only piecemeal in the southern sources remains unresolved ‹speculative›. The complementary distribution with ru / ruwe is examined in Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential).

122.7 Double evidentiality and the siri an / ruwe ne pairing

Double evidentiality — two formal nouns stacked in the same clause — is more frequent in Hokkaido Ainu than in Sakhalin Ainu, and the siri-family forms participate in it in a diagnostically consistent pattern Dal Corso (2018: 326–327, 331–333). When siri an (indirect visual) occurs in a double-evidential construction, its reinforcing partner is invariably ruwe ne, never siri ne — as in the smoke-rising example (supuya at kor sir-an ruwe ne anan, Nakagawa text, Dal Corso ex. 268) Dal Corso (2018: 326–327). The pattern is systematic: siri ki siri ne is also attested (Dal Corso exx. 267, 274), while combinations such as *siri an siri ne are not reported Dal Corso (2018: 331–333).

This distribution provides a reliability argument for the ruwe ne / siri ne split. If the two were merely co-equal visual channels, there would be no structural reason for the indirect visual form to seek out ruwe ne specifically as its ratifying partner. The systematicity of the pairing suggests that ruwe ne functions as a knowledge operator that can ratify the output of a lower-reliability evidential as established fact, while siri ne — as a scene-level visual evidential — cannot fill that ratifying role ‹contested›. Dal Corso leaves the exact semantic driver open Dal Corso (2018: 311–312, 335–336); the full argument is developed in Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential).

122.8 Diachrony, weather predicates, and dialect microvariation

The diachronic path parallels those of the other formal nouns (see Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential)): the noun sir ‘visible appearance, land, weather’ yields the possessed formal noun sir-i 'the appearance of —', which grammaticalizes as the clause-final evidential [clause] siri ne Hirosawa (2026: 65); Takahashi (2018: 111). The grammaticalization is partial: the lexical source remains transparent in weather compounds, and the choice of post-nominal predicate (ne vs an vs ki) continues to carry evidential weight Dal Corso (2018: 24–25).

The meteorological transparency is most visible in the compound predicates built on sir: sir-pirka 'good weather', sir-kunne 'be dark / nightfall', sir-peker 'be bright / dawn'. These incorporate sir as a weather-subject noun and are lexicalized verb compounds, not evidential constructions. The evidential and the weather-noun use are synchronic relatives on a shared stem, one grammaticalized into the clause-final paradigm, the other retained as a productive lexical pattern.

Dialect microvariation runs parallel to what was observed for ruwe ne:

• Tokachi uses the bare concept form sin (allomorph of sir) in clause-final position — not the possessed siri — and applies the stage-level restriction discussed above Nakagawa (2024: 110); Takahashi (2013: 129–131).
• Horobetsu grammaticalizes siri a step further, into adverbial-clause and conjunction-like markers — a 'versatile nominalization' use not reported for well-described Saru. The earliest attestation is Chiri's adversative construction (ci-sautar-i sinki siri suke ki wa … 'my sisters, though tired, cooked…') Takahashi (2018: 108, 111).
• Asahikawa and Shiranuka use ru an in the inferential function that siri an fills in the southern dialects — an apparent complementary distribution that complicates pan-Hokkaido generalizations Dal Corso (2018: 326).