Chapter 80The ko- Applicative

80.1 Overview

The prefix ko- ‘applicative: toward / together-with’ adds a participant — typically a goal, recipient, addressee, or comitative partner — to the argument frame of the verb as a new core object, raising arity by one Nakagawa (2024: 197–198); Bugaeva (2006: 186, 188). On a one-place intransitive base the derived verb is transitive; on a two-place transitive the result is a three-place double-object verb. The applied object enters the object slot and may be cross-referenced by the object-series person prefix — the operative arity diagnostic described in the valency overview and grounded in the applicative system.

Among the three applicative prefixes of Hokkaido Ainu, ko- is the most frequent. Bugaeva's Saru and Chitose corpus places the order ko- > e- > o- by token frequency; taken together, applicative verbs account for roughly one-third of all verbs and up to seven percent of the entire Ainu lexicon Bugaeva (2006: 188). Nakagawa characterizes the applied object as 〜に向かって (directed toward) or 〜とともに (together with), two senses that correspond to the Goal / Addressee cluster and the Comitative cluster in Bugaeva's role classification Nakagawa (2024: 197).

80.2 Semantic roles of the applied object

Bugaeva's systematic role-by-role classification of ko- tokens in her Saru and Chitose sample yields the distribution in Table 1 Bugaeva (2006: 190). Each percentage is the share of ko- tokens in which the applied object bears that role; the intr/tr column records the proportion derived from an intransitive vs transitive base verb.

The four largest categories — Addressee, Goal, Comitative, and Benefactive — account for roughly three-quarters of all uses. All four share a common structural denominator: the applied object is an entity the action is directed toward or performed alongside. For the Comitative role, where the postposition tura 'together with' offers a paraphrase, the applicative construction promotes the companion to the object slot and makes it indexable by the object person-prefix Bugaeva (2006: 191). For most other roles no regular oblique paraphrase exists and the applicative is the only means of encoding the relationship. The Recipient and Source categories (5% each) stand out for their predominantly transitive base verbs (66%), a profile consistent with transfer and extraction verbs rather than the one-place motion verbs that feed the Goal uses (95% intransitive base) Bugaeva (2006: 190). A lexical instance of the Source use is ko-nu 'hear/ask something from someone', where ko- adds the Source participant to two-place nu 'hear', alongside the oblique alternatives wa (ablative) and eun Bugaeva (2015: 84 fn. 14).

80.3 Goal and addressee: relations directed toward a person

With motion verbs, ko- licenses the physical or spatial goal as the new core object. hopuni ‘fly up (intransitive)’ yields ko-hopuni ‘fly up toward (transitive)’ (example above) and hosipi ‘return home (intransitive)’ yields ko-hosipi ‘return to (a place or entity) (transitive)’; in both cases the base intransitive takes S-series suffixes while the derived transitive takes A-series prefixes.

With speech and emotion verbs the applied object is an Addressee — the person to whom an utterance or attitude is directed. The pair ko-yayirayke ‘be grateful to (someone)’ versus e-yayirayke ‘be grateful for (something)’ makes the semantic split explicit: ko- takes the human target of the gratitude (Addressee), e- takes the content — the thing one is thankful for — both with the same base yayirayke ‘give thanks, be grateful’ Bugaeva (2006: 190); Nakagawa (2024: 197–198). The Saru corpus attests ko-yayirayke with a person-deity as applied object:

80.4 Comitative and benefactive uses

When the applied object is a comitative participant — one who acts jointly with the subject — ko- corresponds to the postpositional adjunct tura 'together with'. The applicative construction promotes the companion to an indexable object position, which the adjunct cannot do. This function interacts productively with noun incorporation: when the comitative applied object is incorporated, it merges with ko- inside the verb word, and the verb returns to intransitive arity. Nakagawa gives a Chitose example in which two comitative participants are incorporated in parallel constructions:

Benefactive uses (18%) cover contexts in which the applied object's interests are served by the action, with an approximately even split across intransitive and transitive base verbs. At their boundary the Malefactive category (6%) shades into adversative uses: the applied object is the entity against whose interest the action runs, most commonly derived from intransitive bases (86%), consistent with the pattern of adding a new human object to a one-place activity verb Bugaeva (2006: 190).

80.5 The ko-/o- contrast

Both ko- and o- ‘applicative: into / toward a place’ can encode a directional Goal, and the primary distributional division concerns the applied object's reference type: o- takes place nouns, ko- takes persons, animals, and more abstract directional targets Nakagawa (2024: 198–199). Nakagawa provides a near-minimal pair with the same intransitive base ek ‘come (singular)’:

The o- applicative is restricted to place-denoting applied objects; ko- extends to persons and, as the opening kohopuni example shows, to spatial targets that function as directional goals without being named place nouns in the strict sense (kanto kotor 'sky-vicinity'). The o- applicative is considerably rarer across Hokkaido dialects and is largely confined to verse register Nakagawa (2024: 199); its distribution and relationship to the spatial noun o(r)- are treated in Chapter 81 (The o- Applicative).

80.6 ko- in the derivational chain and with e-

Because ko- raises arity by one, it feeds and is fed by other valency operations in a regular derivational calculus. The chain built on ruska ‘be angry about something (transitive)’ illustrates eight consecutive derivations: ruska (vt, +2) → ko-ruska (vd, +3; adds a person-target of anger) → yay-ko-ruska (vt, +2; reflexive fills the object slot) → i-ruska (vi, +1; antipassive) → ko-i-ruska (vt, +2; ko- re-applicativizes the antipassivized verb) → si-ko-i-ruska (vi, +1) → i-ruska-re (vt) → ko-i-ruska-re (vd) Satō (2023: 40) (citing Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022: §4.1.1)). The step i-ruska → ko-i-ruska is particularly revealing: ko- restores a goal participant that the antipassive i- had absorbed, returning the verb to transitive; the A-series prefix confirms the derived transitivity:

ko- also stacks with the e- applicative. When both prefixes appear on the same verb, e- adds its Content or Instrument applied object and ko- adds its Addressee or Recipient applied object; the orders ko-e- and e-ko- are both attested with no reported semantic difference Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022: §4.1.1); Bugaeva (2006: 188). The speech verb isoytak ‘narrate, tell stories’ is the standard illustration: e-ko-isoytak is a three-place frame in which e- encodes the topic narrated and ko- the listener:

A sequential applicativisation of the same type underlies ko-e-ikka ‘steal something from someone’: base ikka 'steal (vi)' → e-ikka 'steal something (vt, e- adds the stolen item)' → ko-e-ikka 'steal something from someone (vd, ko- adds the Source)' Bugaeva (2006: 191). Here the ko- applied object bears the Source role (the person stolen from), one of the Table 1 categories in which the transitive base (64%) predominates, as this chain confirms.

The learner grammar of Ijäs (2023) includes ekoyayirayke among its ditransitive examples (Lesson 3). The form parses as e-ko-yay-irayke: e- adds the thing one is grateful for, ko- adds the person being thanked, and yay- is the direct-reflexive prefix on the base irayke 'thank'. Ijäs's VD label captures the three-place output but does not expose the derivational layering; her example sentences are constructed and the morphological decomposition is spelled out here following Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022: §4.1.1). For the i--containing members of the chain, see Chapter 83 (The Antipassive / Detransitive i-).

80.7 Lexicalization and less transparent ko- forms

Many verb stems containing ko- have undergone lexicalization, with internal structure that ranges from fully transparent to opaque. The form kosirepa ‘arrive at, reach’ has been proposed as ko- + sirepa, where sirepa itself decomposes as sir-epa (environment + e-applicative + root pa 'go'), giving an original sense of directed motion toward one's surroundings aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2023-12-14) ‹contested›. The Chitose compound kotan-kosirepa=an 'one arrives at the village' incorporates kotan 'village' as the ko- applied object; the fourth-person S-series suffix =an proves that the incorporation has reduced arity back to one place. The phrasal counterpart kotan a=kosirepa keeps kotan as a separate transitive object under the A-series prefix a=, and together the two forms supply the person-affix word-hood diagnostic aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2023-12-14) ‹contested›.

A community-proposed etymology identifies kopan ‘dislike, find distasteful’ as ko- + pan, with pan a deverbal form of pa 'mouth'; the semantic drift toward 'distasteful, taboo' is then tied to the later ko-kopan and the related sir-pan aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024-11-11) ‹speculative›. The synchronic meaning of kopan 'dislike' does not transparently reflect the proposed compositional structure, and the analysis remains unverified against the primary lexicographic literature.

A grammatically more consequential pattern involves ko- appearing within a natural-force verb stem. The Chitose form ku=sir-ko-peker 'I stayed up until dawn' has been parsed as an instance of ko- interpolated into the otherwise closed sir-peker compound (weather-brighten), with its applied object (the speaker, indexed by ku=) raised to clause subject aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) (nukopoli, citing Satō, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024-12-05) ‹contested›. Parallel formations maw-ko-wen and kur-ko-tunas are proposed under the same structural type. If the analysis is correct, ko- here operates inside a lexicalized natural-force compound rather than prefixing to it as a whole — a pattern that would distinguish this use from ordinary derivational stacking and that is not addressed in the primary grammatical literature.