Chapter 2A Typological Profile of Hokkaido Ainu

2.1 Structural profile

Hokkaido Ainu combines verb-final constituent order with extensive prefixation, verbal person marking, and noun incorporation. Its morphology is predominantly agglutinating: a verb may contain several elements whose functions can be distinguished, including person indexes, valency-changing prefixes, and an incorporated noun. These properties underlie its description as a polysynthetic, predominantly head-marking language Bugaeva (2012: 461–463); Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §1).

Ainu's classification as a language isolate concerns the absence of an established relationship with another language family Bugaeva (2012: 461). Typological comparison asks a different question: how its structures resemble those of other languages. Bugaeva relates the concentration of head-marking features to languages around the Pacific Rim and discusses its historical implications Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §7). The proposed external relationships and the evidence offered for them are examined in Chapter 5 (The Genetic Position of Ainu: Isolate Status and Macro-Comparison Controversies).

2.2 Person marking on the verb

In a head-marking construction, morphology on the head expresses a relation to its dependents Nichols (1986). Ainu verbs illustrate this through their person indexes. The prefix ku= identifies a first-person singular subject, en= a first-person singular object, and e= a second-person singular argument. Third person has no overt index. Independent nouns and pronouns used as subjects and objects lack nominative and accusative inflection Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.1); Nakagawa (2024: 163–169).

Person marking permits an argument to remain unexpressed when its reference is recoverable. Overt noun phrases identify participants, introduce them into discourse, or give them emphasis. Since third person is zero-marked and some other indexes serve more than one grammatical role, person morphology alone does not resolve every interpretation Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §§4.1, 4.3). Argument expression and constituent order are treated in Chapter 93 (Argument Realization and Person Indexing) and Chapter 92 (Constituent Order and the Verb-Final Clause).

The lack of core case inflection coexists with postpositions expressing spatial and other peripheral relations. Bugaeva describes this as borderline case marking and distinguishes postpositional particles from a less uniform group of postpositional adverbs Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.4). At the level of complex sentences, her analysis identifies dependent-marking patterns in relative clauses and most subordinate clauses Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §6). The term predominantly head-marking allows for this variation between constructions.

2.3 Possession

A possessed noun can carry both an index of its possessor and a possessed form, also called an affiliative form. In ku=yup-ihi 'my elder brother', the first-person prefix identifies the possessor and -ihi marks the possessed form. A third-person possessor has no overt person prefix Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §5.1.1).

Possessive constructions depend on the noun. Bugaeva distinguishes obligatorily possessed nouns, including many body-part terms and some kin terms, from nouns that express ownership through kor ‘have’. The latter construction contains a prenominal clause, as in ku=kor cep 'my fish', literally 'fish that I have' Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §5.1). Even within kin terminology, the two patterns occur; semantic labels such as 'body part' or 'relative' are insufficient to predict every noun's behaviour. See Chapter 43 (Possessive Constructions and Alienability) and Chapter 48 (Kinship, Address, and Possession).

2.4 Polysynthesis and incorporation

Person indexes and derivational morphology can combine with lexical material within the verb. The applicative prefixes e-, ko-, and o- introduce an additional object with a role determined by the prefix and the base verb. Incorporation places a noun within a verbal complex. The two processes can interact: an applicative object may itself be incorporated Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §§4.5–4.6). The individual constructions are described in Chapter 78 (Applicative Constructions and Their Arguments) and Chapter 88 (Object Noun Incorporation).

Incorporation has several effects on argument structure. Incorporating an object can remove the corresponding independent object position. Incorporation of a noun denoting a natural phenomenon can produce a verb with no remaining argument; body-part incorporation may leave an argument referring to the possessor. Bugaeva also discusses incorporation of a transitive subject in constructions involving natural or supernatural forces and insects Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §§4.6–4.7). These differences are examined in Chapter 89 (Subject Incorporation and External Possessors).

Shibatani describes polysynthetic formations as especially characteristic of epic language, with more analytic expression in colloquial speech Shibatani (1990: 16). Bugaeva's account of open head-marking emphasizes the range of lexical and grammatical material that a verb can contain Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.7). The label polysynthetic therefore describes a structural capacity; its frequency and elaboration vary across registers. Questions of productivity and syntactic analysis belong to Chapter 90 (Incorporation, Quasi-Incorporation, and Word Structure).

2.5 Constituent order

The basic order is subject–object–verb. Modifying clauses precede their head nouns, and postpositions follow their complements. Within this verb-final pattern, the order of overt arguments has some flexibility, particularly in double-object constructions Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §§4.3–4.4).

Discourse also permits a participant to be specified after an earlier predicate. Bugaeva discusses examples in which an initial verb phrase is followed by a noun phrase and the light verb ki 'do'. The later phrase clarifies the subject or object of the earlier expression Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.3). Such patterns are relevant to dislocation and do not require a single rigid order for every stretch of speech.

2.6 Alignment and the fourth person

Alignment describes which grammatical roles share a form. In the person paradigm, S denotes the subject of an intransitive verb, A the subject of a transitive verb, and O its object. The Saru paradigm combines several patterns Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.1, table 1); Nakagawa (2024: 165–169):

The first singular has nominative–accusative alignment; the first plural exclusive and fourth person distinguish all three roles. Second and third persons are neutral. Combinations of persons impose further conditions: in Saru, eci= also expresses a first-person subject acting on a second-person object Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.1). The full account of these combinations is in Chapter 62 (Person Marking and Argument Roles) and Chapter 65 (Eci and Person Interactions).

The fourth-person forms have inclusive, indefinite, honorific, and logophoric uses. In oral narrative they may identify the protagonist whose speech supplies the narrative perspective; in other contexts they can include speaker and addressee or refer to an unspecified participant Bugaeva (2022: Ch.1 §4.1). Sources differ in how they organize and name these functions Bugaeva (2008: 32–43). See Chapter 67 (Fourth-Person Forms and Their Uses) and Chapter 150 (Narrative Person and Reported Speech).

2.7 Further grammatical distinctions

2.8 Summary of structural properties