Chapter 103Relative Clauses and Accessible Relations
Prenominal heads, argument roles, retained oblique relations, locative and possessive morphology, source qualifications, and comparison equivalents.
103.1 The modifying clause precedes its head
An Ainu relative clause precedes the noun it identifies. The head noun corresponds to a participant or relation within the modifying clause. Bugaeva describes the construction as an NP-gap or zero-anaphora strategy: the head is not repeated as an ordinary noun phrase inside the relative clause, while material expressing its grammatical relation can remain Bugaeva (2015: 46–48).
‘The people who came up to the doorway’
Bugaeva 2015: 47; Chitose, Excerpt from example 9, citing Bugaeva 2004:95
Utar is the relative head and the subject of arki. The complete published sentence continues by discussing letting these people enter.
The verb keeps its ordinary morphology. A special relative pronoun is unnecessary. Heads include ordinary nouns and general forms such as kur ‘person’, utar ‘people’, and p/pe ‘thing, person’ Bugaeva (2015: 47).
103.2 Arguments and remaining roles
Subjects and objects can serve as relative heads. Nakagawa illustrates an object relation with aynu kar sake ‘sake that people make’: ‘people’ supplies the actor, and the head ‘sake’ supplies what is made. In his arity analysis, the modifying clause aynu kar has one remaining argument role Nakagawa (2024: 503–504). This calculation concerns the clause before the head.
Applicatives allow an applied object to become the head. Bugaeva's a=e-hotke usi refers to a place to lie down, while kampi a=e-pakasnu hekattar refers to children taught to read and write. In the latter, e- adds the content being taught to pakasnu ‘teach someone’; the children are its recipients Bugaeva (2015: 48, examples 12–13). Both recipient and theme relativization are represented in her three-place-verb examples. The number of person markers on the verb does not determine the number of accessible roles.
103.3 Retained instrumental and comitative relations
An oblique relative can retain a postposition or postpositional adverb. Applicativization is another available construction, but it is not required for every oblique head Bugaeva (2015: 48–49).
‘The uncle with whom my elder brother shot the bear’
Bugaeva 2015: 49; Chitose, Example 15, citing Bugaeva 2004:96
Tura-no expresses accompaniment inside the relative clause. Acapo is the lexical head ‘uncle’; its initial a is not segmented as a person marker.
Instrumental ani is retained in the regular pattern described by Nakagawa, including the drinking-vessel example in Chapter 101 (P and Pe: Participants, Content, and Clause Endings) Nakagawa (2024: 504–506). Satō nevertheless records ku=yupo kamuy tukan teppo ‘the gun with which my elder brother shot a bear’ without ani. He regards this as an unusual pattern and tentatively suggests Japanese influence Satō (2008: 170–171). His contact explanation remains a proposal.
103.4 Places and possessors
A locative relation commonly retains both a relational noun and a postposition. Satō's Chitose illustration uses the affiliative form oro when the head follows the clause Satō (2008: 171).
Satō explicitly notes that Shizunai and some other varieties retain ot ta in this pattern Satō (2008: 172). Bugaeva calls retained or-o resumptive relational material Bugaeva (2015: 50). This is compatible with the absence of a separate resumptive personal pronoun.
‘The insect whose legs are long’
Bugaeva 2015: 49; Saru, Example 17a, quoting Tamura 2000:189
The affiliative suffix on ‘leg’ preserves the relation to the head ‘insect’.
Bugaeva analyzes inalienable possessors as accessible through this retained possessive morphology. She treats alienable possessors differently because the relevant base possessive construction already contains a relative clause, invoking an island restriction Bugaeva (2015: 49, note 10).
103.5 Accessibility and the comparison equivalent
Bugaeva's hierarchy survey distinguishes an unattested relative on the standard of a comparison proper from an attested equivalent built with degree/allative pak(-no) and an existential or negative existential. This construction can express a person with no equal in some quality Bugaeva (2015: 52–56). Its heads include general kur and p/pe, as well as nouns such as nispa ‘wealthy man’.
The survey's reported gaps are evidence about that study's sample. For example, its absence of a three-place-verb actor relative is reported as “not attested” Bugaeva (2015: 47). Such observations should remain separate from an explicit grammatical rejection of a construction.