Chapter 97Existential and Locational Clauses (an / oka)
The existential/locational predicates an (SG) and oka (PL), their number suppletion, presentational use, and the isam negative.
97.1 Semantics and clause structure
The intransitive verbs an ‘exist, be, live (sg)’ (singular) and oka ‘exist, be, live (pl)’ / okay ‘exist, be, live (pl)’ (plural) are the existential and locational predicates of Hokkaido Ainu. Both animate and inanimate subjects appear with them: a single verb covers the domain that Japanese divides between いる (animate) and ある (inanimate), so that 'there is a big house' and 'a person is there' are expressed by the same predicate Yoshikawa (2022: 629–630); Nakagawa (2022: 474); Satō (2008: 3–4). Placed against the typology of intransitive predication (Stassen 1997), the construction is an existential-locational predicate: it asserts that something exists or is found at a location, with the location expressed as an oblique.
The stative reading 'exist, be located, live' alternates with an inchoative one: paykar an 'spring comes / it becomes spring' and kunneywa an 'it becomes morning' show the onset-of-existence value Nakagawa (2024: 118–119); Nakagawa (2022: 477). The same static–inchoative duality holds for the copula ne and for property-concept verbs; neither is morphologically marked for the change reading. The division of labour between the copula and the existential is treated in Chapter 96 (The Copula ne and Predicate-Nominal Clauses).
By raw corpus frequency, an ranks first in the approximately 1.57 million–token Hokkaido corpus (86,986 occurrences) and oka twenty-third (9,637). Both figures fold in the fourth-person intransitive suffix =an and the aspect-auxiliary uses treated elsewhere, so they are upper bounds on the existential predicate proper; even so, the rank signals how load-bearing this predicate type is Nakagawa (2024: 146) ‹corpus-confirmed›.
97.1.1 Strict intransitivity and the locational frame
an is strictly intransitive: it takes one NP argument (the entity that exists or is located) and no second bare NP. A location is expressed as an oblique, canonically the locative postpositional phrase N or ta (or bare N ta), not as a second NP argument. Satō's diagnostic makes this concrete: a sentence modelled on a Japanese double-NP structure, *Tokiyo anakne poro cise poronno an ('Tokyo big-houses many exist', treating Tokyo as a bare NP co-argument), is disfavoured; the grammatical form marks the location overtly — Tokiyo ot ta anakne poro cise poronno an 'in Tokyo there are many big houses' Satō (2008: 3–4).
The community formulation of the same rule is direct: an is intransitive, so *A B an is ill-formed; 'A is at B' is A B or ta an. The transitive locational verb un ‘be at (transitive)’ works differently — because it takes the location as its object, A B un is well-formed aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026); nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024 ‹consensus›.
The locative noun or ‘place (possessed form of o)’ in or ta is the possessed / affiliative form of the spatial root o 'place', expressing 'the place of —'. The detailed distribution of or vs bare ta in locational constructions is documented for the Chitose dialect by Satō (2021).
‘There was a big house, and —’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, Kawagami Matsuko, 'uwepeker 民話11', AA研アイヌ語資料 [aa-irc/013#85]
Bare existential predication: a single NP subject; no second argument. The conjunctive hine continues the narrative clause chain.
‘Then, while I was in my house, —’
Nakagawa 2024: 166; Ishikari, Nakagawa ex. 104, after Sunazawa Kura 1983: 75
Locational predication: the oblique or ta 'at the place of' follows the location NP. The first-person intransitive prefix ku= indexes the subject on the existential stem.
| clause type | template | example |
|---|---|---|
| bare existential (sg) | [SUBJ-NP] an | poro cise an 'there is a big house' |
| bare existential (pl) | [SUBJ-NP] oka / okay | hekattar oka 'there are children' |
| locational (sg) | [SUBJ-NP] [LOC or ta] an | iwor or ta an 'is in the mountains' |
| locational (pl) | [SUBJ-NP] [LOC or ta] oka | kotan ta oka 'they are in the village' |
| negative existential | [SUBJ-NP] isam | nep ka isam 'there is nothing' |
| locational transitive (alt.) | [SUBJ-NP] [LOC-NP] un | kotan un 'be in the village (transitive un)' |
97.2 Number suppletion: an (sg) and oka / okay (pl)
The existential verb is one of the canonical suppletive number pairs in Hokkaido Ainu Nakagawa (2024: 146), a pattern documented cross-linguistically in (Corbett 2000). The singular stem an is uniform across all dialects. The plural stem varies: oka is the prevalent form in Saru, Chitose, Shizunai, and Mukawa; okay prevails in other dialects and, even within oka-dialects, appears before the nominalizer pe / p (thus okay pe, not *oka pe) Nakagawa (2024: 146).
| stem | number | dialectal distribution | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| an | singular | all Hokkaido dialects | |
| oka | plural | Saru, Chitose, Shizunai, Mukawa, and the corpus majority | rank 23 in the full corpus (9,637 tokens, homonym-mixed) |
| okay | plural | other dialects; before pe/p even in oka-dialects | rank 96 in the full corpus (2,608 tokens, homonym-mixed) |
| isam | negative (suppletive) | all dialects | replaces an/oka(y) entirely in negation; see § below |
The plural stem is controlled by subject number in straightforward cases: a singular subject nominal licenses an, a plural nominal licenses oka. The full agreement mechanics are treated in Chapter 70 (Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement).
‘My grandchildren live in this village.’
constructed example
Plural subject mippoutari 'my grandchildren' controls plural oka. Based on Nakagawa (2024: 146).
The fourth-person (honorific / narrative / inclusive) paradigm introduces a mismatch between referential and grammatical number. When the intransitive fourth-person suffix =an is attached, the existential stem is obligatorily the plural oka — even when the argument is referentially singular. The phrase sinen ne oka=an 'I am living alone' (with sinen ne 'being only one, alone') illustrates this directly: a singular first-person narrator uses the plural stem because the fourth-person suffix requires it. Outside the Saru–Chitose core area, this singular-referent / plural-stem pattern is, if anything, the pan-Hokkaido norm Nakagawa (2024: 160–161, 178) ‹corpus-confirmed›. The fourth-person paradigm and its number behavior are treated in Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms) and Chapter 70 (Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement).
‘I was living all alone in my village, and —’
constructed example; ; Shizunai
Singular-referent/plural-verb: the narrative first person triggers the fourth-person suffix =an, which requires plural stem oka, even though oar sinen ne 'truly alone' makes the single referent explicit. Constructed after Nakagawa (2024: 178, exx. 151–152; Shizunai and Kushiro narrators).
97.3 The negative existential isam
The negative existential isam ‘not exist, be absent, die’ is the suppletive lexical negative of an / oka(y): it occupies the same argument slot and takes person affixes normally (e=isam 'you are not there / you are absent') Bugaeva (2012: 496); Nakagawa (2024: 450). Its historical depth is notable: isam 'ない' appears in the 1630 Matsumae no Kotoba wordlist, among the earliest documentary records of the language. The full treatment of existential negation, including the wa isam completive ('V and be gone'), is in Chapter 127 (Negative Existential and Possessive: isam); the standard clausal negation somo is in Chapter 126 (Standard Clausal Negation with somo).
The parallel negative for the possessive predicate kor 'have' is the transitive sak ‘lack, be without’, which takes the possessor as its subject and the lacked item as its object: tamasay ka sak 'has no necklace even'. This LACK/HAVE pairing parallels the EXIST/ISAM pairing and shows the same suppletive negation strategy across the non-dynamic predicate system. Bugaeva (2012)
| construction | value | notes |
|---|---|---|
| isam | negative existential: 'not exist, be absent, die' | suppletive; full person-affix paradigm; default negation of an/oka(y) |
| somo an | negated existential | standard-negation pattern; less common than suppletive isam |
| sak | negative possessive: 'lack, be without' | suppletive negative of kor; transitive (possessor = A, lacked item = O) |
| V wa isam | completive / disappearance | 'do V and be gone'; existential-negative as aspect auxiliary; see Chapter 110 (The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect) |
‘There was not even one.’
Ainu Koraci 1991; Saru, Kanzaki Masayoshi, 'Nibutani kotan ta cip-sanke an', Ainu Times [ainu-times/003/0#21]
sinen ka isam 'not even one exists': the negative-polarity particle ka 'even' combines with isam to express total absence (NPI construction).
97.4 Grammaticalized uses of an
Beyond its core existential and locational function, an enters several grammaticalized constructions that are cross-referenced here but treated in full elsewhere.
97.4.1 Existential aspect auxiliaries
Combining an with a preceding conjunctive particle yields the existential-type aspect periphrases: V wa an (resultative/continuative, '〜ている'), V kor an (progressive), V kane an, and V hine an. Yoshikawa documents these for the Saru and Chitose dialects and notes that an in these constructions retains its concrete existential value — it requires a personal affix and participates in subject-number agreement, distinguishing it from a fully grammaticalized auxiliary Yoshikawa (2022: 629); Satō (2008: 4). The negative counterpart wa isam (completive, '〜てしまう') presses the negative existential isam into the same periphrastic slot. The full paradigm of existential-type aspect forms is in Chapter 110 (The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect); the TAM overview is in Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview).
Closely related is the stative-possessive kor wa an ('have-and-be', expressing resultant or persistent possession), where the possessive verb kor is followed by resultative wa an; this sits at the possession–aspect interface and is treated in Chapter 98 (Predicative Possession: kor, Existential Possession, and isam).
97.4.2 Ambient predicates: mean = me + an
The zero-valency ambient predicate mean ‘it is cold (weather)’ 'the weather is cold' is transparently analysable as me 'cold' + an 'exist' — literally 'coldness exists' Shibatani (1990: 19); Nakagawa (2024: 126). It belongs to a class of ambient meteorological predicates formed by incorporating an environmental noun into an or a similar root (sirpirka 'the weather is good', from sir- 'scene/land' + pirka). These are full verbs: the appearance of subjectlessness follows from noun incorporation, not from the absence of a predicate. The one-place vs zero-place contrast — zero-place mean 'the weather is cold' vs one-place merayke=an 'I feel cold' — is developed in Chapter 99 (Property-Concept (Adjectival) Predication without a Copula).
97.4.3 The ne / an mood alternation in clause-final evidential frames
In the sentence-final evidential construction, the copula ne and the existential an alternate by illocutionary force. A formal noun (possessed-form nominalizer) followed by the copula yields a declarative — ruwe ne, hawe ne, siri ne, humi ne — while the same formal noun followed by the existential forms a content question: ruwe an?, hawe an?, and so on Nakagawa (2024: 392–395). The copula↔existential opposition is thus grammaticalized into a mood distinction at the right periphery of the clause. The full evidential-frame paradigm is in Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema); the inferential ruwe ne is treated in detail in Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential), and the TAM and negation behavior of these frames is in Chapter 100 (TAM, Evidentiality, and Negation on Nonverbal Predicates).
97.4.4 Predicative possession: BE-type an and isam
The existential an (sg) / okay (pl) and the negative isam also appear in a BE-type predicative possession construction, restricted to affiliative-form inalienable nouns (body-part and kinship terms in their possessed morphology): a=yupi an 'I have an elder brother' (literally 'my-elder-brother exists'), a=po-ho ka an 'I even have a son' Huber (2025: 251–253). This is structurally the same existential an serving a possessive reading by virtue of the affiliative-form subject. The HAVE-type kor construction handles the majority of predicative possession; a community-proposed restriction — that inanimate possessors cannot take kor and are paraphrased with the existential instead — is a sharpening of the BE/HAVE split that awaits systematic corpus documentation aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026); nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024 ‹contested›. The full analysis of BE-type vs HAVE-type possession, the kor wa an stative-persistence construction, and the role of the affiliative form are in Chapter 98 (Predicative Possession: kor, Existential Possession, and isam) and Chapter 46 (Adnominal Possession: Double Marking and the Appositive Construction).
References cited in this chapter
Ainu Koraci (1991) ·aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ·Bugaeva (2012) ·Corbett (2000) ·Huber (2025) ·ILCAA Ainu materials (1976) ·Nakagawa (2022) ·Nakagawa (2024) ·Satō (2008) ·Satō (2021) ·Shibatani (1990) ·Stassen (1997) ·Yoshikawa (2022)