Chapter 131Clause Linkage and Its Analyses

131.1 Connecting predicates and events

Ainu connects predicates with forms such as wa, hine, and kor. The verb does not acquire a special linking form distinct from its sentence-final form. Nakagawa emphasizes this morphological difference from Japanese when explaining why a Japanese translation is an unreliable guide to Ainu sentence structure Nakagawa (2024: 514–515, §21.1).

The connector relates the gathering and putting-in events. Other connectors can present a cause, condition, simultaneous action, concession, or manner. Their uses overlap, and a single form can serve more than one relation Satō (2008: 44–47).

131.2 Different accounts of the structure

Nakagawa groups linking expressions into conjunctive particles, formal nouns, and adverbial phrases. He treats them as belonging to neither adjacent sentence, pointing to utterances with a pause before the connector and to the possibility of continuing after an apparent sentence ending Nakagawa (2024: 514–515, §§21.1–21.2).

Refsing distinguishes free conjunctions from bound “conjunctionalizers” in Shizunai. She analyzes the preceding sentence as an embedded adjunct and usually places the pause after its conjunctionalizer. She also records pauses before it, interpreting these as a delayed decision to continue Refsing (1986: 238–239, §14.12).

Bugaeva instead organizes Southern Hokkaido clause linkage under coordination and subordination. Her inventory includes kor in both groups, with different uses, and she notes that Tamura's cited treatment does not make this structural distinction Bugaeva (2012: 497–498, §15.4.6). These classifications reflect different analyses of attachment and dependence. The shared verb forms alone do not decide between them.

131.3 Participants across a chain

Successive predicates may share a subject or introduce another one. Satō's Chitose example names a child in the first clause and a barrel in the second Satō (2008: 45).

Neither third-person subject has an overt person index. The noun phrases, the meanings of the predicates, and the event sequence identify their roles. An overt first- or second-person affix can provide additional information, as the repeated first-person marking does in the honewort example above. The connector wa itself does not require a shared subject Bugaeva (2012: 497).

131.4 Relations described in the following chapters

Complementation and quotation have additional structural properties. A nominalized complement can occupy an argument position; a quotation with sekor presents speech or thought and has its own person-reference patterns. They are described separately in Chapter 106 (Nominalized Complements and Complex Predicates) and Chapter 105 (Quotation, Logophoric Speech, and Indirect Reports).