Chapter 46Adnominal Possession and Double Marking

46.1 Possessors within nominal expressions

Adnominal possession identifies something through its relation to a possessor. Ainu expresses this relation through affiliative noun forms and through constructions with kor “have.” An overt possessor normally precedes the possessed noun or the verb that introduces it Nakagawa (2024: 218–221); Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 52–55). The lexical and semantic choices are treated in Chapter 43 (Possessive Constructions and Alienability).

The affiliative santekehe relates the descendants to Ikuresuye. No pronounced third-person prefix is needed. The noun is independently attested in Tamura's Saru dictionary Tamura (1996: s.v. santeke(he)).

46.2 Marking on the possessed noun

In ku=tekehe “my hand,” the person prefix and affiliative morphology occur on the possessed noun. This is head marking: two morphemes on that noun do not by themselves constitute marking on both the head and dependent. Chudá contrasts this pattern with possession expressed through kor, as well as with unmarked noun sequences Chudá (2025: 247–248, example 8).

Person forms may stand without an overt possessor phrase. Satō also describes possessors separated from their affiliative nouns, including a topic-marked possessor, and argues for a looser syntactic relation in such examples Satō (2008: 156–157) ‹contested›. An ordinary adjacent possessive expression and a discourse-linked possessor need not receive the same constituent analysis. See Chapter 42 (Noun-Phrase Structure).

46.3 Kor with an affiliative noun

The pattern called double marking by Chudá combines kor with an affiliative possessum: a=kor kotanu Chudá (2025: 247–248). Satō records this combination in oral literature, and Nakagawa gives both village and house in a Chitose verse example Satō (2008: 152); Nakagawa (2024: 221, example 251).

Historical descriptions also record combinations of kor and possessed kinship nouns. Kindaichi and Chiri give such forms as akor amachihi in their original spelling Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 26–27). These examples establish the combination's occurrence in particular materials. They do not license unrestricted doubling with every noun.

46.4 Possessive classifier verbs

Bugaeva, Nichols and Bickel analyze kor as a general possessive classifier verb within a relative clause. Other verbs can specify the relation more closely: their cited examples include un with a house, mut with a sword that someone wears, and resu or reska with an animal someone raises Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 55–57, examples 21–24). The examples come from several dictionaries and narrative collections, identified individually in that article.

This is the article's sense of appositive possession: a classifier construction expresses the relationship to the following nominal head. It is distinct from ordinary apposition between a person's name and title. Kindaichi and Chiri illustrate the latter contrast with Risa unarpe ek “Aunt Risa comes” and Risa unarpehe ek “Risa's aunt comes” Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 25).

46.5 Verbal syntax and alternative analyses

The relative-clause analysis has syntactic support. Bugaeva, Nichols and Bickel show possessive kor with plurality and perfectivity, and show that possessive relative clauses can be combined with further relative clauses. Their example from Tamura (1989: 64) uses a-kor a kotan for a formerly possessed village Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 58, examples 30–33).

Refsing instead groups attributive kor, un, and ne with postpositions in her Shizunai description Refsing (1986: 160–161, §14.3) ‹contested›. The difference concerns the grammatical analysis of these attributive uses.

Bugaeva, Nichols and Bickel propose a historical expansion of general kor at the expense of more specific classifiers, and a tendency toward cliticization in some third-person constructions Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 57–59) ‹speculative›. Their account retains the construction's verbal properties; it does not identify kor with an affiliative noun suffix.

46.6 Nested relations

Possessive expressions can themselves contain possessed nouns. Nakagawa's Saru a=yupihi turesihi refers to the younger sister of the man whom the narrator calls his elder brother Nakagawa (2024: 224, example 259). Each kinship noun contributes its own relation. The narrative context determines the social reference of “elder brother”; see Chapter 48 (Kinship, Address, and Possession).

A further possibility is for the possessor to be represented in the clause's verbal grammar when a possessed noun is incorporated. That construction has different diagnostics, discussed in Chapter 47 (Possessors in Noun Incorporation).