Chapter 97Existential and Locational Predicates
Existence, personal location, regional plural forms, narrative number, seasonal change, continuation, and lexical absence.
97.1 Existence and location
The verb an expresses existence or presence. Its subject is the person or thing present; a place can be specified separately. Satō treats it as a one-place verb and illustrates a location expressed with a locative phrase and topic particle Satō (2008: 3–4).
‘There are many big houses in Tokyo.’
Satō 2008: 4; Chitose, Author's illustration
Satō gives this as the more usual expression, while allowing the alternative with Tokiyo as a bare topic. The noun cise itself has no plural ending.
A location phrase does not become an additional argument of an. This distinguishes the construction from verbs which take a place as their object; see Chapter 95 (Oblique Expressions and Verbless Utterances). With a personal subject, an carries the corresponding intransitive person marker.
97.2 Number, dialect, and narrative person
The plural counterpart is oka or okay. Nakagawa records oka in Saru, Chitose, Mukawa and Shizunai, and okay more widely, including Chitose. Even varieties normally using oka have okay before pe or pa p in his description Nakagawa (2024: 146–147, table 16 note 1).
Verbal number also interacts with the fourth-person series and narrative convention. A single narrator can use the plural existential in Shizunai or Kushiro. Nakagawa contrasts this with the usual singular-root narration of one participant in western Hidaka, Chitose and Horobetsu Nakagawa (2024: 178–179).
The existential root an and the fourth-person suffix =an are separate grammatical elements. The latter can attach to other verbs, as both verbs in this example show. See Chapter 70 (Person and Verbal Number).
97.3 Seasons, states, and continuation
Existence includes the onset of a situation. Nakagawa's seasonal example uses paykar an for the arrival of spring Nakagawa (2022: §2.3, example 11).
Existential verbs also occur after linked predicates in expressions of continuing states or activities; Nakagawa's ku=hotke wa k=an describes lying down and remaining there Nakagawa (2024: 166, example 103). The interpretation belongs to the whole combination. The distinctions between progressive and resulting states are developed in the aspect chapters.
97.4 Absence and other existential frames
Isam means ‘not exist’ or ‘be absent’. Bugaeva groups it with verbs whose meanings already contain negation, including possessive sak ‘lack’ Bugaeva (2012: 496). Nakagawa's Saru question repeats isam while asking why a bowl is missing Nakagawa (2024: 410, example 849). Lexical absence, possession, and ordinary negation have related meanings but different predicate structures.
An affiliative noun followed by an existential can express possession; see Chapter 98 (Predicative Possession). Existentials also follow formal nouns in clause endings, including the Saru question ruwe he an Nakagawa (2024: 410, example 848). Their distribution there depends on the particular ending and sentence type.
References cited in this chapter
Bugaeva (2012) ·Nakagawa (2022) ·Nakagawa (2024) ·Satō (2008)