Chapter 113Phasal, Iterative, and Habitual Aspect

113.1 Phasal and iterative strategies in the auxiliary system

Three aspectual domains occupy the periphery of the core existential-aspect system. Completive aspect — the marking that an event has been carried through to its endpoint — is expressed by the pair verbs wa isam and wa okere, which draw on the lexical content of isam ‘not exist, be absent’ and okere ‘finish’ respectively. Iterative aspect, marking that an event or state recurs, is expressed by the reduplicated perfective auxiliary a … a and by the dedicated auxiliary ranke ‘do repeatedly, again and again’. Habitual and generic readings arise from kor an in appropriate temporal or frequentative contexts. The recent-perfect auxiliary nisa ‘just completed’ marks an event as already finished and still current at the moment of speech. Nakagawa (2024: 450); Satō (2006: 47)

All these strategies recruit the auxiliary and pair-verb frames whose architecture is laid out in Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview). The progressive kor an and the resultative wa an are treated as the core existential-aspect system in Chapter 110 (The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect); the perfective auxiliary a and its admirative counterpart aan are treated in Chapter 111 (The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan)). Nakagawa (2024: §15.1)

113.2 Completive aspect: wa isam and wa okere

Both wa isam and wa okere belong to the pair-verb frame introduced in Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview): the second member remains a fully finite verb, and both predicates in V wa V₂ carry their own subject affixes. The bracketing is therefore [V]_VP wa [V₂]_VP, formally two clauses joined by the sequential conjunctive wa, in contrast to the bare auxiliaries that attach directly without a conjunction Nakagawa (2024: 450–451); Bugaeva (2012: 495). The table below situates the two completives alongside wa anu, which carries a related but distinct value.

wa isam marks completion of the event with the added sense that the subject or its outcome disappears or turns out badly; the second verb isam 'not exist, be absent' retains its concrete lexical force while grammaticalising into the completion marker. Nakagawa's Japanese gloss is 〜てしまう, and Bugaeva gives it the label "completive" Nakagawa (2024: 452); Bugaeva (2012: 495).

wa okere uses okere 'finish' as its second predicate and foregrounds thoroughness of completion rather than disappearance of the outcome. With stative predicates in Saru and Horobetsu, the construction shifts into an intensive-stative reading 'be extremely Adj', a transparent extension of 'finish being in a state' Nakagawa (2024: 452–453).

The pair-verb form wa okere contrasts with the bare auxiliary okere used without the conjunctive wa: the conjunction-bearing version carries a nuance of regret or dismay at the completion, while the bare auxiliary is unmarked for affect Takahashi (2022). Nakagawa's Table 74 lists bare okere as approximating wa okere in meaning, confirming that the conjunctive version is the emotionally marked option Nakagawa (2024: 453).

Bugaeva notes a structural parallel between the pair-verb set and Japanese aspectual periphrases: wa isam ≈ 〜てしまう, wa okere ≈ 〜おえる, wa anu ≈ 〜ておく. Nakagawa resists a simple calque account, pointing to wa inu 'try by hearing/tasting' as a type that lacks a Japanese structural model (*〜て聞く), suggesting the pair-verb frame is native and certain Japanese-facing semantic expansions developed under contact Bugaeva (2012: 495); Nakagawa (2024: 455) ‹contested›.

113.3 Inceptive extensions of kor an

The progressive kor an, whose core function is described in Chapter 110 (The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect), extends into an inceptive domain when the predicate denotes a change of state and the temporal perspective falls near the onset of the change. Satō's examples make the extension concrete: sirpeker kor an 'it is getting light' describes the sky as in the process of lightening before full daylight is established; the change is under way and its endpoint is in view Satō (2008: 197). Bugaeva and Nakagawa both list the inceptive as one of the readings available to kor an alongside the progressive core Bugaeva (2012: 494); Nakagawa (2024: 441).

No dedicated inceptive auxiliary exists in Saru or Chitose. The inceptive reading of kor an is driven by verb type and discourse context, not by a distinct grammatical form. Prospective readings tied to intention or imminence — etokus ‘be about to’, etokoyki ‘be getting ready to’, oasi ‘surely will’ — are treated in Chapter 119 (Epistemic Modality, Dubitative, Intentive, and Irrealis).

113.4 Iterative aspect

113.5 Habitual and generic aspect

Hokkaido Ainu has no dedicated habitual morpheme. Habitual and generic readings arise from a combination of kor an, frequentative adverbs or temporal frames, and the event-plural marker pa. The progressive and habitual are formally identical; it is the temporal expression in the clause that licenses the habitual reading Nakagawa (2024: 441); Satō (2008: 197); Bugaeva (2012: 494).

The postverbal plural clitic pa (the pa₂ of Chapter 58 (Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa)) contributes event-plural or pluractional force in habitual and iterative contexts. Following a predicate whose participant plurality is already marked by a suppletive stem, pa shifts the reading toward repetition across occasions rather than a single plural event. The interaction of pa with suppletive stems and the personal-agreement system is treated in Chapter 58 (Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa) and Chapter 70 (Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement).

The auxiliary ranke (§ above) marks the habitual more explicitly when the repeating character of the situation is foregrounded. Together these resources — kor an with frequentative context, ranke, and event-plural pa — occupy the space that a dedicated habitual morpheme fills in languages where habituality is morphologically distinct from aspect (Bybee et al. 1994); (Comrie 1976).

113.6 The recent perfect nisa

The auxiliary nisa ‘just completed; recent perfect’ marks an event as already finished and still current at the moment of speech: すでに起こってしまったことを表す Nakagawa (2024: 312). Bugaeva calls it "recent perfect aspect nisa (just finished)" and lists it as item 7 of the Saru auxiliary inventory Bugaeva (2012: 493). Nakagawa also groups nisa with the completion and past strategies — alongside a and wa isam — as optional devices for anchoring a situation before the moment of utterance Nakagawa (2024: 436).

Like the other auxiliaries in Table 74, nisa takes no person marking; the lexical verb before it carries the subject index. It may be followed by the evidential frame ruwe ne, where the recent-perfect value and the fact-asserting evidential combine naturally.

Within the completion field, three forms target different facets of the endpoint. nisa foregrounds recency: the event is recent and its result is present now. The auxiliary a foregrounds the event as a background to what follows and carries direct-evidential force (treated in Chapter 111 (The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan))). wa isam foregrounds disappearance and belongs to the pair-verb frame; it adds the affective colouring of loss or adverse outcome. Unlike wa isam, nisa is a bare auxiliary — no conjunctive particle, no second person-indexed predicate — so the construction belongs to the auxiliary frame, not to the pair-verb frame.

The surface token nisa returns 3,355 hits in the present corpus of 196,184 sentences (rank 71 by frequency), but the token is homophone-prone — bare nouns and other elements sharing this phonological shape are not systematically distinguished at the surface-string level — so the count is indicative of high frequency rather than an accurate auxiliary tally.