Chapter 110The 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.
110.1 The pair-verb frame and the existential auxiliary
Two periphrastic constructions recruit the existential verbs an (singular) and oka / okay (plural) as the second predicate in a clause chain. The simultaneous frame V kor an marks an action or change in progress and habitual situations; the sequential frame V wa an marks the state that persists after a change has been completed Nakagawa (2024: 439–442); Satō (2008: 195–199); Bugaeva (2012: 494–495).
Both constructions belong to the pair-verb frame: each predicate retains its own person marking and its status as a finite verb. This finite independence is the diagnostic that distinguishes them from fully grammaticalized aspect suffixes, and it is the basis on which Nakagawa treats kor an and wa an as forms that express aspect-like meaning rather than as grammatical aspect proper Nakagawa (2024: 442). Yoshikawa develops the same point under the cover term existential aspectual forms (存在型アスペクト形式): an here is less grammaticalized than Japanese いる/ある, retaining its concrete existential sense, and the cline from lexical existential to aspectual auxiliary has advanced without reaching obligatory inflectional morphology Yoshikawa (2022); (Bybee et al. 1994) ‹contested›.
The locational and existential uses of an and oka are covered in Chapter 97 (Existential and Locational Clauses (an / oka)). The suppletive SG/PL alternation underlying the pair belongs to Chapter 58 (Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa). The conjunctive particles kor 'while' and wa 'and then' are analysed in their wider clause-linking roles in Chapter 134 (Simultaneous kor 'while' and Overlapping-Event Clauses) and Chapter 132 (Sequential wa and Clause Chaining). The merged and extended continuatives kane an, kan an, tek an, and hine an belong to Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an), and the actional-perfect auxiliary a/rok to Chapter 111 (The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan)).
110.2 The suppletive existential as auxiliary
an and oka form one of the suppletive singular/plural verb pairs that the Hokkaido verb system maintains: the singular stem is an, the plural oka (realized as okay in many phonological environments). The two are in strict complementary distribution by the number of the controlling argument Nakagawa (2024: 142–145); Bugaeva (2012: 471); Ijäs (2023) ‹consensus›.
In the aspectual periphrases this suppletion carries over directly: the auxiliary tracks the same argument that would trigger the choice between the lexical forms. For kor an and the standard intransitive pattern of wa an, that argument is the shared subject; in the transitive object-agreement pattern of wa an, it is the object. The preserved SG/PL alternation is consistent with the partial-grammaticalization assessment shared by Nakagawa, Yoshikawa, and Bugaeva: a fully fused aspect suffix typically loses lexical alternations of this kind. Ijäs catalogues an/oka as one of several suppletive pairs — alongside a/rok 'sit', ek/arki 'come', and arpa/paye 'go' — whose number suppletion extends into grammaticalized contexts Ijäs (2023); Nakagawa (2024: 142–151) ‹consensus›.
110.3 kor an: progressive, habitual, and inceptive
The construction V kor an (plural: V kor oka) joins the lexical verb to the simultaneous conjunctive particle kor 'while' and the existential verb. With action verbs — activities without an inherent change of state (apkas 'walk', mina 'laugh', sinot 'play') — the construction marks the action as in progress at the reference time. With change verbs — predicates whose completion involves a change of state or location (as 'stand up', hacir 'fall', ek 'come') — it marks the process leading toward the change, not the resulting state, which is the domain of wa an Nakagawa (2024: 440–441); Satō (2008: 196); Bugaeva (2012: 494).
‘while (he) was springing upon the deer —’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, Kawakami Matsuko, isoytak monologue 1 [aa-irc/003#64]
kor an with an action verb (yukkoterke, incorporating the noun yuk 'deer'); the progressive marks the action as in progress at a narrative reference point.
The construction also covers habitual and repeated situations — the type that Japanese translates with 〜している in iterative contexts — and with change verbs approaching their culmination, an inceptive reading ('it is getting light'; Saru epuykehe tane sipuske kor oka 'the buds are now about to open') Satō (2008: 197); Nakagawa (2024: 441); Bugaeva (2012: 494).
‘at noon I would always play with the puppy, and’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, Kawakami Matsuko, uwepeker 9 [aa-irc/009#14]
Habitual value set by the temporal clause sittokap kor 'whenever it was noon'. Both sinot and the existential an carry the fourth-person suffix =an, the pair-verb signature (§agreement below).
When the subject is plural, an is replaced by oka. The generic plural marker pa may follow the main verb and precede the conjunctive:
‘they are chatting’
Nakagawa 2024: 441; Saru
Plural subject: oka replaces an in the auxiliary slot. This is the predicate of Nakagawa's ex. 983; the full sentence is a=onaha turano uenewsar pa kor oka 'they are chatting with my father'.
110.3.1 Person agreement in kor an
Because kor an is a chain of two finite clauses, the lexical verb and the existential each take a person index independently, and both must agree with the shared subject. The co-indexation is the clearest diagnostic of the pair-verb structure: in the example above, the fourth-person suffix =an appears on both sinot and the existential. The same holds with overt second-person prefixes:
‘What are you crying about?’
Nakagawa 2024: 442; Saru
The second-person prefix e= prefixes both ciskar 'cry' and the existential an; two independently indexed finite verbs joined by kor.
110.3.2 The Tokachi first-person restriction
In Tokachi, kor an cannot co-occur with a first-person subject. The progressive of a first-person event uses kan an instead: ku=nukar kan ku=an 'I am watching it' is grammatical where *ku=nukar kor ku=an is not. Takahashi proposes that Tokachi kor an carries an observational component — presenting an event as witnessed by the speaker — that is incompatible with the speaker being the agent performing the action Takahashi (2022) ‹contested›. The restriction is specific to Tokachi; no equivalent is reported for Saru, Chitose, or the remaining Hokkaido varieties. The distribution of kan an is covered in Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an).
110.4 wa an: the resultative
The construction V wa an (plural: V wa oka) joins the lexical verb to the sequential conjunctive particle wa and the existential verb, denoting the state that exists after the completion of a change. The canonical environment is a change verb: the nearest Japanese equivalents are 〜ている in its result-state reading and 〜てある Nakagawa (2024: 439); Satō (2008: 197–198); Bugaeva (2012: 494); Satō (2006).
‘taking away what had arrived, and’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, Kawakami Matsuko, uwepeker 8 (1) [aa-irc/006#146]
ek wa an 'has come and is now here': the resultative of the motion-change verb ek. The nominalized clause ek wa an pe 'the thing that has arrived' functions as the object of hoppa.
The motion verb ek provides the clearest minimal pair, because it enters both frames with distinct readings:
‘is coming / is on the way’
Nakagawa 2024: 441
kor an with ek: the change of location is in progress, the arrival not yet complete. Nakagawa ex. 986.
‘has arrived and is (now) here’
Nakagawa 2024: 441
wa an with ek: the motion is complete and the resultant state — being present at the destination — persists. Nakagawa ex. 987.
Stative verbs enter wa an under their inchoative reading. The verb poro ‘be big; become big’ 'be big / become big', read as 'become big', takes wa an to describe the reached state: poro wa an 'has grown / is now big' Nakagawa (2024: 440). Action verbs — activities without an inherent endpoint — are excluded, since they leave no stable result for the existential to predicate: *tapkar wa an (from tapkar ‘dance’) and *uenewsar wa an are ungrammatical Nakagawa (2024: 441). Their completion falls to the auxiliary a, treated in Chapter 111 (The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan)).
Satō extends the action-verb exclusion into a complementary-distribution claim: the actional perfect — completion of an action, without implying a residual state — belongs exclusively to the auxiliary a, while wa an covers only stative perfects (a result state persists) Satō (2006: 63); Satō (2008: 198) ‹corpus-suggested›. Bugaeva concurs that a separate auxiliary-based construction handles the actional perfect Bugaeva (2012: 493, 495).
110.4.1 mokor wa an: sleep as a result-state
Nakagawa draws attention to mokor wa an 'is asleep' as a case where Ainu forces a choice that Japanese leaves ambiguous. The verb mokor ‘sleep, fall asleep’ is construed as a change of state — the act of falling asleep — rather than as an ongoing activity, so the result state (being asleep) is what wa an predicates. A progressive reading under kor an is unavailable for this verb Nakagawa (2024: 444). Japanese 眠っている is ambiguous between the progressive and the resultative; West Japanese dialects resolve the same ambiguity formally, with -shiyoru (progressive) and -shitoru (resultative), paralleling the Ainu distinction.
‘is asleep’
Nakagawa 2024: 444; Saru
Nakagawa ex. 998. Only the resultant-state reading is available: Ainu construes sleep as the result of falling asleep, not as an ongoing activity.
110.4.2 Person agreement in wa an
As in kor an, both predicates in the chain carry independent person marking. For wa an, however, the controller of the existential depends on transitivity and which argument holds the resultant state Nakagawa (2024: 443); Satō (2008: 198):
| pattern | condition | controller of an | illustrative form | gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (a) intransitive | V intransitive; subject persists in resultant state | S of V | hotke=an wa an=an | 'I am / was lying down' |
| (b) transitive, agent | V transitive; agent = pivot of an | A of V | a=ehotke wa an=an | 'I am lying on it' |
| (c) transitive, object | V transitive; object holds resultant state | O of V | a=o wa an | '(I) have put it in — it is in there' |
In (a) and (b), both predicates bear the same person index, exactly as in kor an. In (c) — the construction closest to Japanese 〜てある — the agent's action is complete and what persists is the object in its new state; the existential an appears bare when the object is third-person or inanimate, because no explicit person prefix is required Nakagawa (2024: 443); Satō (2008: 198); Bugaeva (2012: 495).
‘(I) have put it in — it is in there.’
Nakagawa 2024: 443; Saru
Object-agreement pattern (c): an indexes the object (the thing placed), not the fourth-person agent a=. The agent's action is presupposed; what the construction asserts is the object's resultant state (Nakagawa exx. 996–997).
110.5 Perception and cognition verbs
Verbs of perception and cognition — nukar ‘see, look at’, eramuan ‘understand’, and nu ‘hear’ — take either construction, and the contrast between nukar kor an and nukar wa an is the main analytical locus of debate within this domain.
Nakagawa's 1981 analysis attributed the distinction to the degree of active involvement of the perceiver: nukar kor an is active, deliberate looking, while nukar wa an is a passive coming-into-view of a scene Nakagawa (2024: 445). Satō (2006) challenges this characterization. In his account the primary contrast is between continuation of the perceiving action and continuation of the post-acquisition knowledge state: nukar kor an = 'is in the act of looking' and nukar wa an = 'has seen it and now holds that knowledge'. Any impression of deliberateness is a contextual by-product of the action/result distinction rather than its basis Satō (2006: 65); Satō (2008: 199). Nakagawa concedes in the 2024 edition that the question warrants further investigation Nakagawa (2024: 446) ‹contested›.
Yoshikawa adds a structural caution: for these verbs, the line between "continuation of an aspectual relation" and "a coincidental co-occurrence of two situations" is genuinely unclear, and the ambiguity is part of the broader argument that these constructions occupy a gradient between clause chaining and grammaticalized aspect Yoshikawa (2022) ‹contested›.
110.6 Grammaticalization status and typological framing
The cross-linguistic grammaticalization of an existential or locative verb into a progressive or resultative auxiliary is well-attested typologically (Bybee et al. 1994); (Comrie 1976). Hokkaido Ainu represents a mid-stage on that cline. Three properties mark the constructions as only partially grammaticalized ‹consensus›:
First, the source verb is morphologically and syntactically present — both predicates remain independently finite and indexed. Second, the suppletive number alternation an/oka is preserved, a property typically lost when aspect auxiliaries fuse into bound morphemes. Third, aspect is not an obligatory grammatical category in Ainu: the constructions can be omitted without ungrammaticality, unlike the obligatory aspect marking of heavily aspect-marking languages Takahashi (2022); Yoshikawa (2022).
In Bugaeva's typology of Ainu periphrastic frames, the pair-verb construction is distinguished from the auxiliary-verb frame (hosting a, nankor, rusuy, and their kin) precisely by this double indexation: in the auxiliary frame only the main verb is person-marked, while in the pair-verb frame both predicates are Bugaeva (2012: 492–495).
110.7 Dialect variation and the existential-aspect family
Several Hokkaido varieties deploy additional forms that overlap with or extend the kor an/wa an field. Yoshikawa groups kor an, wa an, kane an, and hine an under the cover term existential aspectual forms, all tracing to the same grammaticalization source in the lexical existential an, with individual varieties positioned at different points along the cline Yoshikawa (2022); Yoshikawa (2020).
In Saru and Chitose, kane an covers both progressive and resultative readings and adds a noteworthy-situation nuance that the simpler pair lacks; in Shizunai and Samani it serves as a plain, unmarked equivalent of either construction. Tokachi and Ishikari have kan an — leaning progressive in Tokachi, resultative in Ishikari — and Tokachi additionally uses tek an for the resultative of change verbs Nakagawa (2024: 446–449); Satō (2006: 84–85). The full dialect survey belongs to Chapter 112 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an).
One community observation notes a correspondence between Hokkaido wa an and a Sakhalin form hemaka in cross-variety word lists (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, December 2024) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹speculative›. The sources consulted for this grammar do not address this correspondence, and its functional equivalence requires independent verification in the Sakhalin grammatical literature.
References cited in this chapter
aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ·Bugaeva (2012) ·Bybee et al. (1994) ·Comrie (1976) ·Ijäs (2023) ·ILCAA Ainu materials (1976) ·Nakagawa (2024) ·Satō (2006) ·Satō (2008) ·Takahashi (2022) ·Yoshikawa (2020) ·Yoshikawa (2022)