Chapter 43Possessive Constructions and Alienability

43.1 Two ways to express a possessive relation

Hokkaido Ainu commonly expresses possession either with the verb kor “have” before a noun or with person marking on an affiliative noun form. Compare ku=kor cip “my boat” and ku=tekehe “my hand.” In the first expression, ku= marks the subject of “have”; in the second it identifies the possessor of the hand Nakagawa (2024: 218–219); Satō (2008: 151–152). The noun forms themselves are introduced in Chapter 44 (Concept, Affiliative, and Personal Forms).

The labels alienable and inalienable describe the familiar contrast between transferable possessions and relations such as body part to person. They offer a useful starting point, but the choice also depends on the noun, dialect, genre, and intended relation. A list dividing all objects into things that can or cannot change owners would miss several documented patterns.

43.2 Possessibility as a grammatical property

Bugaeva, Nichols and Bickel distinguish semantic alienability from grammatical possessibility: whether a noun can or must take a possessor in its own argument structure. In their analysis, many Ainu alienable nouns are grammatically non-possessible. A dog can be owned, for example, while “my dog” is expressed through “the dog that I have,” with the person marker on kor Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 47–55, example 19a). Their term therefore describes the noun's grammar, rather than the practical possibility of ownership.

Satō illustrates the lexical restriction with Chitose ku-kor káne “my money,” rejecting *ku-kane for that meaning Satō (2008: 151). The asterisk reports his judgment. It does not establish an identical restriction for every noun referring to an artifact.

43.3 The verbal construction with kor

In the relative-clause analysis, the possessor is the subject of kor, and the following noun is the head corresponding to its unexpressed object. The construction retains verbal possibilities, including aspectual material and further modification Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 55, 58–59). An overt possessor noun can also precede the verb; see Chapter 46 (Adnominal Possession and Double Marking).

Bugaeva, Nichols and Bickel also report an elicited prosodic pattern in which third-person possessive kor attaches closely to the following noun. They interpret this as a tendency toward cliticization Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 59, example 35) ‹contested›. This is an analysis of a developing pattern alongside the construction's verbal behavior.

43.4 Body parts, clothing, tools, and material relations

Body parts and many kinship terms take affiliative forms. The pattern extends to some clothing and tools carried on the body: Nakagawa cites Chitose ku=tesmaha “my snowshoes” and Saru a=tasiroho “my machete” Nakagawa (2024: 219, examples 244–245). Satō likewise includes blood, the heart, clothing, and tutelary spirits in his discussion Satō (2008: 151–152).

Affiliatives also express relations between a whole and a part, or between a material and something made from it. Nakagawa's examples include op nici(hi) “a spear's shaft,” sinta atu(hu) “a cradle's cord,” sayo ruri(hi) “the liquid of porridge,” and ikaray ohawe(he) “nettle soup.” Parentheses show the long-form extension. His top cise(he) describes a house made of bamboo, a different relation from a person's ownership of a house Nakagawa (2024: 219–220).

43.5 Lexical, dialect, and genre differences

For ordinary ownership of cise “house,” Nakagawa reports the construction with kor in Saru, Chitose, and Horobetsu prose. Affiliatives occur in verse in these varieties and in prose elsewhere Nakagawa (2024: 220–221). In her Shizunai material, Refsing finds e cisehe and e kor cise similarly frequent, with no apparent meaning difference Refsing (1986: 88). Her observation applies to that material.

The sources also differ on “bow.” Satō lists Chitose ku-kor ku “my bow” and reports that this noun lacks an affiliative Satō (2008: 152). Nakagawa records both constructions in Saru Nakagawa (2024: 229) ‹contested›:

Nakagawa proposes that a narrative association between a trap bow and its declared owner helps explain the affiliative use, while explicitly allowing the alternative with kor in a similar scene Nakagawa (2024: 229) ‹speculative›. The two descriptions leave the contribution of dialect, sense, speaker, and genre partly open.

43.6 Adjacent nouns and the limits of a semantic rule

Two adjacent concept-form nouns can express a classifying or attributive relation. Nakagawa separates this pattern from his two possession constructions: its first noun cannot simply be replaced by a possessive person marker Nakagawa (2024: 218). The phrase–compound distinction is treated in Chapter 39 (Nominal Compounds and Their Structure) and Chapter 42 (Noun-Phrase Structure).

Nakagawa further proposes that any ordinary noun might potentially have an affiliative when the semantic relation is suitable, pointing especially to material–product expressions. This broader proposal differs from an account organized around lexical non-possessibility Nakagawa (2024: 230); Nakagawa (2022: §4.2); Bugaeva, Nichols & Bickel (2022: 55–56) ‹contested›. The documented constructions support a wider range than bodily ownership alone; they do not supply a complete affiliative paradigm for every noun.

A specific possessor is also insufficient as the sole condition. Nakagawa quotes Satō (1997: 150) on a Chitose sentence about all human beings having bellies, where the belly noun is affiliative despite the generic statement Nakagawa (2024: 231, example 268). Further grammatical conditions appear in Chapter 44 (Concept, Affiliative, and Personal Forms).