Chapter 79The e- Applicative

79.1 Valency effect and position

The prefix e- belongs to the applicative series together with ko- ‘applicative ko-’ and o- ‘applicative o-’. An overview of all three and their place in the valency architecture is given in Chapter 73 (Valency, Voice, and Noun Incorporation: Overview). Its function is to add one participant to the verb's argument set: an intransitive becomes transitive and a transitive becomes a double-object verb, consistently raising arity by one regardless of the semantic role of the added argument Nakagawa (2024: 192–194); Bugaeva (2006: 186–188). The valency-class diagnostic of Chapter 57 (Transitivity, Valence Classes, and Ambitransitivity) confirms the change: after e- attaches to an intransitive, the verb takes the prefixal agent indexes ci= and a= and resists the intransitive S suffixes Nakagawa (2024: 137, 140).

Positionally, e- occupies the slot between the outer person prefix and the root: person — applicative — root — forming-suffix — causative-suffix — suffixal-person Nakagawa (2024: 210–212). The prefix and root together form a single accentual unit; Nakagawa analyses the applicative-plus-verb sequence as one word for prosodic purposes, a pattern the community archive documents with forms such as kotán → ekótanne (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord 2024) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026); Nakagawa (2024: 192–194) ‹consensus›. Among the three applicatives, ko- is the most frequent, followed by e- and then o-; by Bugaeva's estimate, applicative-derived verbs account for roughly one-third of all Ainu verbs and up to seven percent of the total lexicon Bugaeva (2006: 188).

The instrument sub-type (see §2 below) offers the most direct illustration of the +1 arity effect. The verb tuye ‘cut’ is transitive in its base form and takes one object (the thing cut); e-tuye raises it to a three-place verb whose new object position is occupied by the cutting instrument.

79.2 Sub-types and semantic roles of the applied object

Nakagawa distinguishes four sub-types of e- by the paraphrase properties of the applied-object slot Nakagawa (2024: 195):

Bugaeva's corpus study of the Chitose and Saru dialects supplies percentage figures across all attested applied-object roles Bugaeva (2006: 190). The intr/tr column records what proportion of each role class is derived from an intransitive versus a transitive base.

The instrument sub-type (type 1, 13%) has a clear ani-paraphrase. A straightforward instance is a general capability statement using the motion verb apkas ‘walk’:

The purpose sub-type (type 2, 2%) takes a goal or activity noun that can be replaced by a kusu-phrase:

Locative applied objects (type 4, combining Location 5% and Path 2%) take a place or postpositional noun, paraphrasable with ta, un, or peka:

Path applied objects carry a directional relation along a route rather than a static location. The example below has a postpositional noun bearing the fourth-person object prefix as the applied object:

79.3 Content and Theme-Patient: the dominant and non-oblique uses

Content (39%) and Theme-Patient (17%) together constitute more than half of all attested e- forms and derive almost entirely from intransitive bases (91% and 96% respectively). These roles correspond to Nakagawa's type (3): the applied object has no adpositional paraphrase, and e- here functions as direct transitivization rather than oblique promotion Bugaeva (2006: 191); Nakagawa (2024: 195–196). The verb simpay ‘worry’ is intransitive in its base form; the thing worried about enters as a Content applied object:

The derivational chain ikka ‘steal (intransitive base)’ → e-ikka 'steal something' → ko-e-ikka 'steal something from someone' illustrates successive applicativization: each step adds one argument Bugaeva (2006: 191). The e-ikka step adds the stolen item as a Theme-Patient applied object with no adpositional equivalent.

Bugaeva draws a typological inference from these data: most Ainu e- applicatives are the only grammatical means of expressing a given participant relation, so they are obligatory in the sense that the cross-linguistic option of an adpositional alternative simply does not exist Bugaeva (2006: 187, 191–196). The Peterson typology of applicative constructions provides the comparative frame for this characterization (Peterson 2007).

A periphrastic pattern complementary to the morphological applicative exists for the instrumental reading: the construction ani X p ('the thing with which one does X') expresses instrumentality as a nominalization rather than through the e- prefix — for example, ani e=kanpinuye p 'a thing with which one writes' (= pencil) or ani humi a=aste p 'a thing with which one produces sound' (= musical instrument; nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord 2026) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹corpus-confirmed›. The two constructions serve different functions: the morphological applicative frames the instrument inside the verbal predicate; the ani ... p nominalization names the instrument as a noun.

79.4 Lexicalized forms and the preverb question

Three homophonous prefixes occupy the same surface slot and require the arity computation for disambiguation: the applicative e- (+1), the affiliative e- 'head of' (0), which fills a body-part position while retaining its own possessor, and the second-person agent index e= (a person index, effective −1 on the available slots) Nakagawa (2024: 192–193); Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022: §4.3.3). The minimal contrast between the applicative and the affiliative — he-puni 'lift one's own head' versus e-puni 'lift someone's head' — is set out in Chapter 78 (The Applicative System: Overview and the Preverb-vs-Applicative Debate).

Many verbs carry a lexicalized e- whose applicative analysis is opaque in current usage. A community-proposed decomposition treats eykaun ‘surpass, exceed’ as applicative e- applied to kaun derived from the postpositional phrase ka un 'be on top of' (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord 2024) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹speculative›. The etymology is semantically motivated but cannot be verified against the diachronic record from the sources consulted; synchronically, eykaun functions as a transitive base.

The analytical question of whether some e- forms are better described as lexical preverbs (case-relation prefixes) than as applicatives in the cross-linguistic sense is not engaged by the principal sources consulted. Bugaeva treats all three markers as applicatives throughout and positions the older labels — 充当相 (Kindaichi and Chiri 1936) and case-prefix 格の関係を表わす接頭辞 (Chiri 1942) — as historical precursors rather than competing analyses Bugaeva (2006: 186); Nakagawa (2024: 192–193). Baker's incorporation analysis, which treats applicative formation as P-incorporation in the syntax, is the nearest theoretical alternative present in the literature consulted (Baker 1988); Shibatani (1990: 65) ‹contested›. A dedicated assessment appears in Chapter 78 (The Applicative System: Overview and the Preverb-vs-Applicative Debate).

79.5 Stacking, re-applicativization, and the feeding of noun incorporation

e- stacks freely with ko- in both orders, ko-e- and e-ko-, with no documented meaning difference between the two sequences on the same verb type. In e-ko-isoytak ‘tell stories to someone about something’, e- contributes the Content applied object (the stories told) and ko- the Addressee (the person addressed) Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022: §4.1.1); Bugaeva (2006: 188). The ordering constraints on stacked applicatives and their interaction with reflexive and reciprocal morphology are developed in Chapter 82 (Applicative Stacking, Ordering, and the Feeding of Relativization).

e- may apply to a verb that has already been antipassivized with i- ‘antipassive’, restoring transitivity while the antipassive's absorbed participant remains unexpressed. The compound e-i-kasuy ‘help people with something’ illustrates this: i-kasuy 'do helping' is intransitive (the beneficiaries absorbed by i-), and e- re-applicativizes it to take a Content object encoding the nature of the help.

The +1 arity effect of e- also opens the path to oblique noun incorporation. Instruments, locations, and purpose arguments cannot incorporate directly, because they are adjuncts, not core arguments; once e- promotes them to object status, the derived object becomes incorporable. Shibatani formulates the dependency as a general condition: oblique incorporation in Ainu is invariably mediated by a prior applicative Shibatani (1990: 62, 66); Nakagawa (2024: 484). The incorporated forms at-e-uk 'catch with a net' (instrument; cf. at ani uk) and turepta-e-arpa 'go to dig lily-bulbs' (purpose) both rest on the same e- applicativization illustrated above. Kaiser's analysis of the applicative-incorporation interaction provides a formal account of the feeding relation (Kaiser 1998). The incorporation patterns that result are treated in Chapter 88 (Object (Patient) Noun Incorporation) and Chapter 90 (Oblique Incorporation and the Syntactic-vs-Lexicalist Debate).