Chapter 147Conjunctions and Discourse Connectives

147.1 Word-class status and the connective–clause-linker boundary

Hokkaido Ainu has no dedicated word class of conjunctions (接続詞). Nakagawa folds the clause-initial discourse connectives treated here into the adverb class (副詞) and concludes that no separate conjunction category is warranted Nakagawa (2024: 516, §21.2.3). The structural ground for this classification is the independence of these forms: they need no host predicate, impose no morphological requirement on the following clause, and can occur sentence-initially after a pause or paragraph break. This distinguishes them from the bound post-predicate 接続助詞 (clause-linking particles) — wa, hine, kor, akusu, and their relatives — which attach directly to a verbal stem and cannot stand alone. A further diagnostic is stacking: the free connectives can follow a 接続助詞 without any intervening predicate, yielding attested sequences such as … hine, orano … 'and then, after that …' Nakagawa (2024: 516) ‹consensus›.

The bound clause-linkers and the switch-reference-like behaviour of hine versus akusu are treated in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory) and Chapter 133 (The hine/akusu Contrast and Switch-Reference-Like Linkage); the sequential particle wa as a clause-chaining device in its own right is in Chapter 132 (Sequential wa and Clause Chaining). The present chapter covers only the free, clause-initial layer, grouping its members by discourse function: the sequential– temporal pair orano and rapokke; the scene-shift adverb tane; the anaphoric-resumptive newaanpe; the NP coordinators newa and usa; and the demonstrative-adjacent forms nea and tap.

147.2 orano and orowano — the sequential connective

orano (variant forms orowano, ora, oraun) is the default narrative sequencer, glossed 'and then, after that' Nakagawa (2024: 516). Its etymology is transparent: the relational-locative noun or ‘side, place, vicinity’ combined with the ablative source particle wano ‘from, away from’ yields orowano 'from that place/point onwards', which has grammaticalized to a purely sequential reading. The syncopated form orano is the most frequent in the aligned corpus (rank 114; 1,927 tokens across Hokkaido and Sakhalin data); further reductions to ora and oraun are dialectally attested Nakagawa (2024: 516) ‹corpus-confirmed›.

In both narrative and conversational discourse, orano can open a new clause after a completed prior clause, or stack immediately after a 接続助詞 such as akusu 'when/after'. The following example shows the latter stacking pattern:

The combination of orano with the resumptive form newaanpe (§ below) recurs as a narrative construction: a completed event is nominalized and then resumed by the anaphoric demonstrative, providing both temporal succession and referent continuity within a single discourse move Nakagawa (2024: 516). The function of such sequences in maintaining episode cohesion is developed further in Chapter 138 (Tail-Head Linkage and Narrative Clause Cohesion).

147.3 rapokke and rapoketa — simultaneous temporal

rapokke and rapoketa mark temporal overlap or parallelism between two narrative threads rather than strict sequentiality, and are glossed 'meanwhile, at that time, at that juncture' Nakagawa (2024: 516–517). Both derive transparently from the locative noun rapok ‘that moment, that juncture’ extended by a locative or temporal suffix, following the same etymological pattern as orano from or. Their frequency in the aligned corpus is considerably lower than that of orano, and they appear primarily in narrative prose rather than conversation. Nakagawa gives no dialect restriction for these forms.

147.4 tane — temporal adverb and scene-shift marker

tane is the general temporal adverb 'now'; its discourse-connective use emerges when it opens a new clause after a completed prior episode. In this position — particularly after a clause nominalized by p ‘fact, NMLZ’ or after an episode-closing evidential frame — tane signals a shift in scene, time reference, or central participant, functioning as a narrative reset Nakagawa (2024: 516). There is no separate discourse-particle lexeme: it is the ordinary temporal adverb 'now' that acquires connective force from its position and the completion of the preceding unit. The corpus rank (54; 4,272 tokens) therefore conflates the temporal-adverb and scene-shift uses ‹speculative›; per-function counts would require disambiguation across individual texts.

The interaction of tane with the aspectual and TAM apparatus of the verb it introduces belongs to Chapter 109 (Tenselessness and the Time-Reference System); its role in signalling participant change across episodes is taken up in Chapter 139 (Reference Tracking and Argument Continuity) and Chapter 155 (Narrative TAM and Evidential Patterning by Genre).

147.5 newaanpe — the resumptive anaphoric connective

newaanpe is the form most distinctively positioned at the clause boundary as a cohesive device, yet it is best analysed as an anaphoric demonstrative NP rather than a pure conjunction. Its composition is transparent: nea ‘that (anaphoric demonstrative)’ + an ‘exist, be present’ + pe ‘thing, fact’ = 'that existing thing/fact'. The whole form occupies nominal position, refers anaphorically to a proposition or entity just established in the prior clause, and introduces the clause that predicates something of it — yielding a resumptive-cohesive function glossed 'and as for that / and as for that (fact)' Nakagawa (2024: 516). Its connective feel is structural (clause-boundary position + invariably anaphoric reference) rather than intrinsic to its lexical class.

Corpus rank 1,349 (84 tokens) reflects the more specialized, narrative-internal role of newaanpe compared with orano. The form has low homonymy — unlike tane or tap — so the count is a relatively clean estimate of its frequency ‹corpus-confirmed›.

The boundary between 'resumptive demonstrative NP' and 'discourse connective proper' is not drawn in the available sources; the form participates in both the demonstrative system (Chapter 50 (Demonstratives, Anaphora, and Definiteness)) and in discourse-structural patterns that overlap with topic marking (Chapter 140 (Topic and Focus Marking: anak(ne), patek, and ka)). Whether to treat it as a connective or as an instance of an anaphoric topic-NP in clause-initial position is a matter of descriptive standpoint rather than an empirical question the present data resolve ‹speculative›.

147.6 NP coordinators — newa and usa

Two additional forms operate at the level of nominal coordination rather than at the clause boundary. newa 'and' joins two NPs into a single conjunctive NP and marks the first member; it does not appear after the last member of the conjunction Nakagawa (2024: 322). A sharp regional restriction applies: the Saru and Chitose dialects use bare NP juxtaposition for nominal coordination and lack newa in this function Nakagawa (2024: 322). Community discussion corroborates the restriction independently — newa as an explicit 'and'-coordinator is little used in modern Ainu and its distribution is dialectally conditioned aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, 2023-12-12) ‹corpus-suggested›.

A proposed morphological decomposition ne + wa — with ne ‘be (COP)’ and wa ‘CONJ (sequential clause-linker)’ — has been noted in community discussion as consistent with the connective meaning 'it being so, and …' aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (aomidori_cs_, 2023-12-12). This decomposition is an informal proposal unsupported by a published etymological study ‹contested›.

usa 'and, as well as, both … and …' serves as the Tokachi/Kushiro counterpart for listing. Unlike newa, which marks only the first member, usa can appear after each coordinated element, and it extends to verbal predicates as well as nominal ones; in western Hokkaido the same form functions as an adverb rather than a particle Nakagawa (2024: 324).

147.7 nea and tap — demonstrative-adjacent forms

The anaphoric determiner nea 'that (aforementioned)' is not a connective in its own right but the demonstrative stem that underlies both newaanpe (§ above) and topic-resumption constructions where an anaphoric NP headed by nea opens the next clause. The demonstrative system and the proximal/distal/anaphoric paradigm are in Chapter 50 (Demonstratives, Anaphora, and Definiteness).

tap and tapne present a dual picture. As temporal-emphatic adverbs they carry the senses 'just now', 'thus', 'precisely this/that', positioning the clause in the immediate narrative moment or resuming a prior referent with deictic force Nakagawa (2024: 516). However, the phonological form tap also functions as an emphatic particle (係助詞 in the kakari-musubi framework) with the sense 'こそ/まさに', and corpus counts (rank 143; 1,330 tokens) conflate the two uses. The boundary between the clause-initial emphatic adverb and the emphatic particle is not settled in the sources consulted ‹speculative›. The particle use is treated in Chapter 141 (Cleft, Pseudocleft, and Nominalization-Based Focus). Cross-reference also Chapter 50 (Demonstratives, Anaphora, and Definiteness) for the demonstrative continuum within which both nea and tap sit.

147.8 Connective inventory

Corpus counts are raw string-match totals from the aligned Hokkaido corpus (1,572,917 tokens; 45,225 types), which includes Sakhalin data and does not disambiguate homonyms. The counts for tane (plain adverb vs. scene-shift marker) and tap (emphatic adverb vs. emphatic particle) are therefore indicative upper bounds on each individual function ‹speculative›. The count for newaanpe is relatively clean given the form's low homonymy. Per-function and Hokkaido-only breakdowns require bespoke corpus scripting. Tamura (1996)