Chapter 62Person Marking and Argument Roles
Basic S, A, and O paradigms, person-conditioned alignment, interaction forms, zero third person, and the morphological status of person markers.
62.1 Person marking on predicates
Ainu predicates distinguish participants through person marking. Independent pronouns are usually optional and can add emphasis or contrast; they do not replace the verb's person pattern Nakagawa (2024: 163–165); Bugaeva (2012: 472–473). The following description concerns ordinary indexed predicates; imperatives, copular complements, and support constructions have additional restrictions.
Three role labels make the paradigms easier to compare. S is the sole argument of an intransitive; A is the agent-like argument of a transitive; O is its object. These are grammatical roles. An experiencer or an affected participant can be S, and an O need not be a physically affected patient Bugaeva (2012: 472–473); Nakagawa (2024: 129–134).
‘I laughed.’
Bugaeva 2012: 473, example 14c; Chitose
Oda Ito example; the source also shows an optional independent pronoun kani.
62.2 A reference paradigm
The table summarizes the Saru and Chitose basic forms. For A, the other argument is third person; for O, the A argument is third person. Combinations of speech-act participants require the interaction paradigms below and in the following chapters Nakagawa (2024: 166–171, tables 25–29).
| Person series | S | A | O |
|---|---|---|---|
| First singular | ku= | ku= | en= |
| First plural | =as | ci= | un= |
| Second singular | e= | e= | e= |
| Second plural | eci= | eci= | eci= |
| Third person | No overt marker | No overt marker | No overt marker |
| Fourth person | =an | a= | i= |
The person-series labels identify forms. Their reference also depends on discourse and register. First plural commonly expresses an exclusive “we” in conversation, while fourth-person forms can express inclusive, indefinite, honorific, or narrative reference Nakagawa (2024: 164–165, 174–180). See Chapter 64 (First-Person Plural and Clusivity) and Chapter 67 (Fourth-Person Forms and Their Uses).
Other dialects have partly different forms and distributions. Ishikari has second-plural es=, and fourth-person A alternates between a= and an= under region-specific conditions Nakagawa (2024: 166–170).
62.3 Alignment depends on person
Bugaeva describes this system as mixed alignment. In first singular, S and A share ku= and contrast with O en=: S = A ≠ O, a nominative–accusative pattern. First plural and fourth person distinguish all three roles: S ≠ A ≠ O, a tripartite pattern. Second and third person show a neutral pattern in the basic paradigm, S = A = O Bugaeva (2012: 472).
Formal identity does not erase the grammatical role. In the following Ishikari example, the first e= indexes the object of “bring,” while the second indexes the subject of “come.”
These differences concern person and argument role. They provide no lexical split in which one class of intransitives takes ku= and another takes en=. The verb's frame must be established before its person forms are interpreted.
62.4 Combinations are not simple concatenations
Saru and Chitose use eci= for conversational first-person A acting on second-person O across four number combinations: singular or plural A with singular or plural O. This portmanteau coincides in form with the ordinary second-plural marker Nakagawa (2024: 171, tables 28–29); Satō (2008: 146–147).
The reverse combinations also require a paradigm. Saru distinguishes second-plural A in eci=en= and eci=un=. Satō's principal Chitose account uses en= and un= for both second-singular and second-plural A, while also reporting the longer Chitose variants from Nakagawa's dictionary Satō (2008: 147); Nakagawa (2024: 171–173). See Chapter 65 (Eci and Person Interactions) for the dialect comparisons.
62.5 Zero expression and the analysis of third person
Third person has no audible exponent in these paradigms. Satō analyzes it as a zero person affix. Nakagawa instead treats third person as the absence of an affix in his arity analysis Satō (2008: 121); Nakagawa (2024: 137, 166–170) ‹contested›. Both descriptions account for clauses without a spoken person marker; the difference concerns the underlying grammatical representation.
Satō's later criticism of Nakagawa's earlier account distinguishes semantic participants, available argument positions, and morphological indexing Satō (2023: 39, note 3, discussing Nakagawa 2001). Those distinctions also matter for three-place verbs: one object index does not mean that the verb has only one semantic object. See Chapter 66 (Object Indexing and Three-Place Verbs).
62.6 Person markers and word boundaries
The equals sign distinguishes person boundaries from derivational hyphens in this grammar. Nakagawa explains the same notational choice without making it a claim that all person markers are clitics Nakagawa (2024: 59–60).
Bugaeva, drawing on Tamura's accent and separability observations, assigns different morphological properties to different markers. She treats ku=, ci=, e=, en=, un=, i= as prefixes, a=, eci= as clitic-like, and =an, =as as word-like Bugaeva (2012: 472–473, reporting Tamura 1970: 305). These are attributed morphological analyses; a single spelling convention does not settle them ‹contested›.
Satō's Chitose yaynu-an-pa further shows why person placement must be checked with number morphology Satō (2008: 104). The ordering qualifications are discussed in Chapter 56 (The Verb Word and Its Boundaries) and Chapter 58 (Verbal Number and Stem Alternation).