Chapter 137Manner and Degree Adverbial Clauses

137.1 Scope of this chapter

The conjunctive-particle inventory of Hokkaido Ainu (surveyed in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory)) contains three sets of items whose semantics cluster around manner, state, and degree rather than temporal sequence, conditionality, or causation. This chapter treats all three: the conjunctive particle no ‘(state/manner linker)’ in its stative and negated-manner uses; the group ⑦ simile and evidential-inference particles pekor ‘as if (counterfactual)’, apekor ‘as if (strong)’, noyne ‘apparently (inference)’, and kotom ‘it seems (literary)’; and degree and extent clauses built around the postposition pakno ‘up to, to the extent of’. The chapter is bounded on two sides: the manner-adverb-deriving suffix -no that attaches to stative verb roots to form adverbs such as pirkano ‘well, in a good way’ belongs to the word-formation domain and is treated in Chapter 61 (The Adverbializer -no and Adverb Formation from Verbs); the conditional and concessive particles, though partially manner-like in their semantics, are documented in Chapter 135 (Conditional, Temporal, and Concessive Clauses). Nakagawa (2024: §9); Satō (2008: §1.7)

137.2 The no particle: stative and negated-manner clauses

The conjunctive particle no occupies the same post-predicate slot as wa and hine (see Chapter 132 (Sequential wa and Clause Chaining)), but its distribution is conditioned by the aspectual and polar character of the clause it closes rather than by temporal semantics. Nakagawa states the conditioning directly: no appears when the preceding predicate is either stative, expressing a persistent condition, or an action verb under negation Nakagawa (2024: 340). Satō identifies the high-frequency pattern as the 'without doing X' reading after negation: in somo … no … constructions the choice of no over wa or kor is near-obligatory Satō (2008: 45–46). Refsing reports the same distributional pattern for Shizunai, where no on a stative predicate yields an adverbial-adjunct reading 'in the state of X' Refsing (1986: 241).

The particle no is segmentally identical to the manner-adverb suffix -no that derives adverbs from stative verb roots (see Chapter 61 (The Adverbializer -no and Adverb Formation from Verbs)), and the two overlap where the host is a stative property verb. The string pirka no arpa 'went well' admits either the particle analysis — a stative-predicate clause [pirka] followed by the connective — or the suffix analysis, where pirkano 'well' is a derived adverb modifying the motion verb. Nakagawa notes that the particle analysis is more transparent for productive negation patterns such as k=eyam no 'without hesitating', but that frozen adverbs such as poronno 'a lot' — from poron ‘be big, be much’, which does not mean 'big-ly' in compositional terms — resist it; he concludes that a sharp line cannot be drawn between the particle and the suffix Nakagawa (2024: 340–341). Ijäs presents no for the learner alongside the claim that it tends to mark a same-subject context while wa marks a different-subject one; that framing is Ijäs's own and is not supported by the primary grammars, which derive the distribution from polarity and aspect ‹contested› Ijäs (2023). That debate is adjudicated in the overview chapter.

137.3 Simile and evidential inference: pekor, apekor, noyne, and kotom

Nakagawa Nakagawa (2024: 353–355) places a cluster of four particles in group ⑦ of his semantic taxonomy, labelled 推量・様態 'conjecture/manner'. All four follow a finite predicate in the standard post-predicate position, but they encode the speaker's epistemic stance toward the preceding clause — either as a comparison against something the speaker knows to be false (simile) or as an inference drawn from available evidence. The distinction matters for translation and for analysis: pekor likens the main-clause state of affairs to a counterfactual standard, while noyne and kotom present a genuine inference the speaker holds about what is actually the case Satō (2008: 55–56). These particles overlap with the broader evidential system; their relation to the nominalizing evidentials is taken up in Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema) and Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential).

Sources: Nakagawa (2024: 353–355); Satō (2008: 55–56).

The pekor cluster. Pekor and its dialectal allomorphs pokor and pokon liken the main-clause situation to the preceding clause while presupposing that the preceding clause is false or counter-to-fact from the speaker's viewpoint Nakagawa (2024: 354). The intensified apekor (allomorphs apokon) strengthens this to utter impossibility: Nakagawa's illustration is a figure in narrative so large that two or three men stacked on one another would match the comparison, a physically impossible standard Nakagawa (2024: 354). A segmentally related postpositional pair — nepkor / nepkon 'like (a noun)' — takes a nominal host and is distinct from the clause-final particle both in its host category and in its position Nakagawa (2024: 354).

Noyne and kotom. Where pekor introduces a counterfactual standard, noyne and kotom present what the speaker genuinely infers. Noyne is the everyday-speech variant, attested in Saru, Chitose, Horobetsu, and Shizunai; kotom(no) carries a literary register and is commonly found with judgment verbs such as a=esanniyo 'I judged/surmised' Nakagawa (2024: 354–355). Recurring collocation frames for noyne include noyne ramu / yaynu 'think that', noyne humas 'feel as if', and noyne siran 'look as if' Nakagawa (2024: 355).

Both noyne and kotom sit at the boundary of the evidential system in Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema). Their collocational frames — noyne siran 'look as if', noyne humas 'feel as if' — parallel the situational evidential siri ne (visible scenes) and the non-visual humi ne (sensations), but the two systems differ structurally: noyne and kotom are conjunctive particles and do not take the copula ne ‹consensus›.

Refsing's Shizunai grammar classifies pokon 'pretence' and kotom 'seeming' together as "nominalizers of appearance" in her §14.12 conjunctionalization taxonomy, and lists alongside them a "comparative" formal noun koraci Refsing (1986: 259). These subclass labels are specific to Refsing's Shizunai analysis and are not foregrounded in Saru or Chitose descriptions; the extent to which koraci is productive in other Hokkaido dialects is not established in the accessible sources ‹speculative›.

137.4 Degree and extent: pakno and comparison frames

The postposition pakno ‘up to, as far as, to the extent of’ heads a range of extent and degree constructions in Hokkaido Ainu. Its core use is spatial or temporal — 'up to the house', 'until now' — but the same form extends to degree: 'to the extent/degree of X'. Nakagawa lists pakno in the postposition inventory without assigning it a special comparative status; the degree reading follows from the general extent semantics applied to a property or state rather than a location or time point Nakagawa (2024: 504).

In the clause-linkage domain the most grammatically productive role of pakno is in comparison frames. Bugaeva documents a prenominal relative-clause strategy in which pakno marks the standard against which a property of the head noun is measured. Because direct relativization of a standard of comparison — the head noun filling a gap in a comparative clause — is not attested, Ainu instead embeds a degree-adjunct clause prenominally: the construction '[to whose extent no rich man exists] rich man' places the comparison standard inside the relative clause as a degree adjunct rather than gapping the standard as an argument Bugaeva (2015: 45, 49).

The full relativization mechanism behind this construction is treated in Chapter 103 (Relative Clauses: The Gap Strategy and the Accessibility Hierarchy). Bugaeva identifies the type as an "equivalent of the standard-of-comparison relativization" — a degree-adjunct workaround rather than a grammaticalized comparative morpheme — and leaves open whether it constitutes a productive strategy or a pragmatic repair ‹corpus-suggested› Bugaeva (2015: 45).

A further degree/comparison use surfaces in Satō's description of kane. Alongside its core function as a simultaneity particle in non-Saru/Chitose dialects (see Chapter 134 (Simultaneous kor 'while' and Overlapping-Event Clauses)), Satō records a reading glossed '〜ほどに' 'to the degree/extent that' — a degree-comparison value of the same form Satō (2008: 54–55). The extent to which this degree use is distinct from the simultaneity value, and how it distributes across dialects, is not settled in the available sources ‹speculative›.