Chapter 173Glossary of Grammatical Terms

173.1 Scope and conventions

This glossary defines the grammatical and linguistic terms used throughout the grammar. Entries are alphabetized by the English head-term. Each entry gives a concise definition oriented to Hokkaido Ainu, notes where the analysis is unsettled ‹contested›, and cross-references the chapter or chapters where the term is most fully analyzed and exemplified. Ainu forms follow the Latin transcription adopted in Chapter 11 (The Latin Phonemic Transcription); grammatical abbreviations used here follow the inventory in Chapter 10 (Interlinear Glossing, Abbreviations, and Citation Conventions).

173.2 Terms

affiliative form

The possessed or combining shape of a noun, as distinct from its citation shape (see concept form). The affiliative suffix — realized as -he, -i, -e, or other allomorphs depending on the stem — attaches to produce the possessed noun used inside possessive phrases, nominalized constructions, and evidential frames: ru-we 'the trace of —', hum-i 'the sound/feeling of —'. The same morphological category underlies the grammar's glossing abbreviation poss Nakagawa (2024: 55–61); Satō (2008). See Chapter 44 (Concept Form vs. Affiliative (Possessed) Form) and Chapter 45 (Morphophonology of the Affiliative Suffix and Echo/Copy Vowels).

agent (A)

In the S/A/O notation used throughout this grammar, A designates the subject of a transitive verb — the argument that in a canonical action event controls the action and triggers the A-position person-index morpheme. Following (Foley & Van Valin 1984). See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms).

alignment (morphological)

The pattern by which person-marking morphology groups or distinguishes the three core argument roles S, A, and O. Hokkaido Ainu displays mixed alignment: the first singular is nominative–accusative (S=A≠O), the second and third persons are neutral (S=A=O), and the first-plural-exclusive and fourth-person rows are tripartite (S≠A≠O) ‹contested›. (Bugaeva 2012: 472, 498) characterizes the overall system as basically tripartite; (Dal Corso 2025) argues for a mixed nominative–neutral–inverse account of the Sakhalin paradigm. See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms), Chapter 71 (The Split-Intransitive (Active–Stative) Core), and Chapter 72 (Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate).

antipassive

A valency-reducing operation that detransitivizes a transitive verb, suppressing or demoting the object; the verb then takes intransitive S-position morphology. In Hokkaido Ainu the prefix i- ‘something/someone’ (glossed antip) is the primary antipassive device. The prefix is homophonous with but distinct from the fourth-person object i= Bugaeva (2021); Nam (2021). See Chapter 83 (The Antipassive / Detransitive i-).

applicative

A valency-increasing morphological operation that promotes an oblique argument (beneficiary, goal, instrument, comitative, or location) to direct object status, making it indexable on the verb. Hokkaido Ainu has three productive applicative prefixes: e- ‘on/at/with’ (spatial/instrumental), ko- ‘to/for’ (goal/benefactive), and o- ‘in/among/from’ (spatial immersion/motion-through) Bugaeva (2006); Bugaeva (2010); (Peterson 2007). See Chapter 78 (The Applicative System: Overview and the Preverb-vs-Applicative Debate), Chapter 79 (The e- Applicative), Chapter 80 (The ko- Applicative), and Chapter 81 (The o- Applicative).

aspect

Grammatical encoding of the internal temporal structure of an event — whether it is presented as a bounded whole (perfective) or as an ongoing process (imperfective). Hokkaido Ainu lacks an obligatory tense category (see tenselessness) but marks aspect periphrastically through auxiliary constructions: the anterior/perfective auxiliary a, existential-frame aspectuals (kor an, wa an), and the mirative auxiliaries aan/anan (Comrie 1976); Takahashi (2022). See Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview) and Chapter 113 (Phasal, Iterative, and Habitual Aspect).

bound noun / obligatorily possessed noun

A noun that cannot appear in its bare citation form without a possessor. Body-part, kinship, part-whole, and relational nouns form this class; they require a personal-prefix possessor or a nominal possessor in the affiliative form Nakagawa (2024); Satō (2008). See Chapter 34 (Nominal Subclasses and Obligatorily-Possessed (Bound) Nouns).

causative

A valency-increasing operation that adds a causer argument to the structure of a base predicate. Hokkaido Ainu causative morphology centers on the suffix -re (with dialectal allomorphs including -e and -te) on intransitive bases, with additional forms in Horobetsu Nakagawa (2024); Satō (2008). See Chapter 74 (The Morphological Causative -re / -e / -te).

clitic

A morpheme that is phonologically dependent on a host word but syntactically freer than a canonical affix; written in this grammar with the boundary symbol =. The personal-index morphemes of Hokkaido Ainu range from fuller prefixes (e.g. ku=, en=) to more clitic-like items (e.g. =an, =as); their precise morphological status is disputed ‹contested› Bugaeva (2012: 472–473); Nakagawa (2024: 49, 183); Sakaguchi (2024: ix, 77–85). See Chapter 69 (The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering).

clusivity

The grammatical distinction within first-person plural between inclusive reference (speaker plus addressee) and exclusive reference (speaker and others, excluding the addressee). Hokkaido Ainu has a dedicated exclusive first-plural series (ci=/=as/ un=), while inclusive 'we' falls within the fourth-person forms Nakagawa (2024: 163–164); Bugaeva (2012: 472, 475). See Chapter 64 (First-Person Plural and the Clusivity Question (ci=/=as, un=)) and Chapter 67 (The Indefinite/Fourth Person: Forms, Reference, and Agent-Defocusing).

concept form

The citation or free shape of a noun, as distinct from its affiliative (possessed) shape (see affiliative form). Some stems show different shapes in these two environments: the evidential formal nouns appear in their concept form (ru, sir, haw, hum) in certain Tokachi constructions, and in their affiliative form (ru-we, sir-i, etc.) in the standard evidential frame Nakagawa (2024: 55–62); Takahashi (2013). See Chapter 44 (Concept Form vs. Affiliative (Possessed) Form).

copula

A predicating element that links a subject to a non-verbal predicate (nominal, stative, or spatial). The Hokkaido Ainu copula ne ‘be, be equal to’ predicates nominal and property complements; it also hosts the direct evidential constructions (ruwe ne, siri ne, etc.) and takes intransitive S-position person marking Nakagawa (2024: 224–232); Satō (2008). See Chapter 96 (The Copula ne and Predicate-Nominal Clauses).

desiderative

A modal category expressing the subject's desire or wish to perform or experience an action. The Hokkaido Ainu desiderative is formed with the auxiliary rusuy ‘want to’, which follows a nominalized or subordinated form of the predicate Nakagawa (2024). See Chapter 116 (The Desiderative rusuy).

ditransitive

A verb requiring three arguments: an agent-like subject, a recipient-like primary object, and a theme-like secondary object. Hokkaido Ainu caps person indexes at two per verb; with three-place predicates such as kore ‘give’, the object index targets the human recipient while the theme surfaces as an unindexed noun phrase Satō (2023); Nakagawa (2024: 363–365). See Chapter 73 (Valency, Voice, and Noun Incorporation: Overview) and Chapter 66 (Object Indexing: Monotransitive and Ditransitive Clauses).

evidential / evidentiality

A grammatical category encoding the speaker's source of information for the proposition expressed. Hokkaido Ainu marks evidentiality analytically: a finite clause is nominalized by a bound formal noun derived from a sensory noun, and the result is predicated with the copula or an existential verb. Four formal nouns build the core paradigm — ruwe (inferential/direct knowledge), siri (situational/visual), hawe (reportative), humi (sensory) — realizing the C1 type in the typology of (Aikhenvald 2004: 63–65) Dal Corso (2018); Nakagawa (2024: 258, 390–396). See Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema).

existential predicate

A predicate asserting the existence or presence of an entity or state of affairs. Hokkaido Ainu uses an ‘exist, be (singular)’ and oka ‘exist (plural)’ as the primary existential predicates; both also serve as host predicates in indirect evidential frames (siri an, hawe as) and in continuative aspectual periphrases Nakagawa (2024); Satō (2008). See Chapter 97 (Existential and Locational Clauses (an / oka)).

formal noun / defective noun

A member of the closed set of bound nouns that function as clause-nominalizing heads in evidential, complementation, and relative-clause constructions: ruwe, siri, hawe, humi, hi, pe/p, and kur. They require an adnominal modifier (the nominalized clause) and cannot take independent demonstratives or adjectival modifiers of their own, distinguishing them from ordinary lexical nouns Nakagawa (2024: 385–396); Satō (2008: 131–137). See Chapter 35 (The Formal / Defective Noun Set (ruwe, hawe, siri, humi, hi, pe, kur)).

fourth person (4)

The form-set — a=/an= (A), =an (S), i= (O) — that covers the referential ground outside persons 1–3. Its range includes inclusive first plural, indefinite/agent-defocusing, honorific second-person address, narrative first person, and logophoric reference inside quotations. Terminology is unsettled: Nakagawa labels the set 'fourth person', Tamura divides it into eleven separate persons, Bugaeva analyses the quotation use as logophoric, and Satō treats the forms as polysemous ‹contested› Nakagawa (2024: 164, 174–179); Tamura (1972: 18–20); Bugaeva (2008: 40–44); Satō (2008: 203–208). See Chapter 67 (The Indefinite/Fourth Person: Forms, Reference, and Agent-Defocusing) and Chapter 68 (Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person).

grammaticalization

The diachronic process by which a lexical or less-grammatical item develops into a more grammatical one, typically with phonological reduction, increasing obligatoriness, and narrowed distribution. The Hokkaido Ainu evidential system illustrates partial grammaticalization: the sensory nouns ru, sir, haw, hum have moved toward clause-nominalizers and evidential heads while retaining traces of their lexical origin, with the degree of grammaticalization varying across Hokkaido dialects (Hopper & Traugott 2003); Dal Corso (2018: 24–25); Takahashi (2018). See Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema) and Chapter 158 (Internal Reconstruction and Grammaticalization Pathways).

head-marking

A typological property in which grammatical relations between a head and its dependents are indexed on the head rather than (or in addition to) on the dependents. Hokkaido Ainu is a canonical head-marking language: the verb bears person indexes for its subject and object, while nominal arguments carry no case suffixes (Nichols 1986); Satō (2025: 361). See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms).

inferential (evidential)

An evidential value signaling that the speaker's information comes from reasoning, trace evidence, or knowledge already processed and assimilated, rather than from direct perception or hearsay. The Hokkaido Ainu formal noun ruwe (from ru ‘track, path’) heads the inferential/direct-knowledge evidential ruwe ne, the most frequent and most grammaticalized member of the four-term system Dal Corso (2018: 305, 327); Nakagawa (2024: 392). See Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential) and Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema).

logophoric reference

A form of pronominal reference that tracks the self-referent of a quoted or embedded speaker within reported speech, distinct from both ordinary third person and the matrix-clause first person. In Hokkaido Ainu the fourth-person prefix a=/an= and object i= serve logophoric reference inside quoted speech, identifying the embedded speaker/object independently of the matrix participant set Bugaeva (2008); Nikitina & Bugaeva (2021). See Chapter 150 (First-Person Narration, the Logophoric Fourth Person, and Reported Discourse) and Chapter 68 (Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person).

mirativity

A grammatical or pragmatic category encoding the speaker's surprise or the counter-expectational character of the event asserted. In Hokkaido Ainu, mirative meaning is contributed chiefly by the perfectve auxiliaries aan and anan; the evidential ruwe ne may co-occur with these forms but does not itself lexicalize surprise ‹contested› Dal Corso (2018: 336); Hirosawa (2026: 90). See Chapter 125 (Mirativity, Evidential Scope, and Grammaticalization to Sentence-Final Particles).

nonconfigurationality / pronominal-argument hypothesis

Two related analytical positions on languages with relatively free constituent order and systematic argument omission. Nonconfigurationality holds that such languages lack the structural positions that configure subjects and objects in languages like English. The pronominal-argument hypothesis proposes that the obligatory person indexes on the verb are the true syntactic arguments, with overt nominal phrases functioning as discourse-level adjuncts rather than core arguments. Whether either analysis applies to Hokkaido Ainu is debated ‹contested›. See Chapter 94 (Pro-Drop, (Non)configurationality, and the Pronominal-Argument Debate) and Chapter 92 (Basic Constituent Order and Head-Final Syntax).

nominalization

The morphological or syntactic conversion of a verb or predication into a nominal constituent. Hokkaido Ainu nominalizes extensively: the suffixes -p/-pe (thing/patient nominalizer) and -i/-hi (fact/manner nominalizer) form derived nouns; formal-noun heads (ruwe, hi, pe) nominalize entire clauses in evidential, complementation, and relative-clause constructions Nakagawa (2024: 383–396); Satō (2008: 119–140). See Chapter 101 (The Nominalizers -p/-pe and -i/-hi (Participant, Event, Place, Fact)) and Chapter 102 (Lexical-Head and Formal-Noun Nominalization (kur, uske, ruwe/hawe/siri/humi)).

noun incorporation

A morphological process in which a noun — typically representing an object, oblique, or subject participant — is compounded into the verb stem, forming a single polymorphemic verbal word. Hokkaido Ainu is one of the typologically well-documented cases, with object, oblique, and subject incorporation all attested; incorporated nouns interact with applicative morphology and relativization (Mithun 1984); Shibatani (1988); Satō (2022). See Chapter 88 (Object (Patient) Noun Incorporation), Chapter 89 (Subject Incorporation and Possessor-Stranding), and Chapter 90 (Oblique Incorporation and the Syntactic-vs-Lexicalist Debate).

number (verbal and nominal)

The grammatical category encoding the count of individuals in a referent set. Hokkaido Ainu verb number is marked through suppletive stem alternations (e.g. ek/arki 'come') and through the suffix -pa. Nominal number is transnumeral: see the entry for transnumerality (Corbett 2000); Nakagawa (2024: 141–159). See Chapter 58 (Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa) and Chapter 41 (Nominal Number: Transnumerality, -utar, and the Locus of Plurality).

object (O)

In the S/A/O notation, O designates the patient-like argument of a transitive verb — the argument indexed by the object-position morphemes (e.g. en=, i=, un=). Following (Foley & Van Valin 1984). See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms) and Chapter 66 (Object Indexing: Monotransitive and Ditransitive Clauses).

oblique

An argument or adjunct that is not indexed on the verb as a core subject or object — typically a locative, source, goal, instrument, or comitative participant expressed by a postpositional phrase. The applicative prefixes promote obliques to indexable object status (see applicative). See Chapter 53 (Postpositions, Local Case, Motion Events, Comitative, and Instrumental) and Chapter 78 (The Applicative System: Overview and the Preverb-vs-Applicative Debate).

perfective

An aspect value that presents an event as a completed, bounded whole, typically locating it in the speaker's anterior domain. The Hokkaido Ainu anterior/perfective auxiliary a attaches after the verb (and after evidential frames) and contributes both boundedness and anteriority; it is the source of mirative readings in certain constructions Nakagawa (2024: 289–295); Takahashi (2022). See Chapter 111 (The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan)) and Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview).

person (grammatical)

A deictic category encoding the role of the referent in the speech act: first (speaker), second (addressee), third (other), and fourth (the residual set covering inclusive, indefinite, honorific, and logophoric). Hokkaido Ainu formally distinguishes four persons, each with singular and plural, through proclitic and enclitic indexes on the verb Nakagawa (2024: 163–179); Tamura (1972). See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms).

pitch accent

A prosodic system in which a single high-pitch position (or a H→L fall) within the prosodic word is linguistically distinctive, as opposed to a full lexical-tone system (where every syllable carries a tonal specification) or a simple stress system. Hokkaido Ainu has a pitch-accent system with largely predictable high-pitch placement governed by syllable weight and position; the language also divides into accented and accentless dialect classes Shibatani (1990: 52–58); Nakagawa (2024: 33–51). See Chapter 23 (The Pitch-Accent Placement Rule and the Accented/Accentless Dialect Split) and Chapter 24 (The Prosodic Unit and the Accent-versus-Tone Analysis).

polysynthesis

A typological property of languages in which words — particularly verbs — routinely incorporate multiple participant-tracking and relational morphemes, producing complex words that translate as full clauses in analytic languages. The extent to which Hokkaido Ainu counts as polysynthetic in the technical sense, versus merely morphologically complex, is debated in the noun-incorporation literature ‹contested› Shibatani (1988); (Mithun 1984). See Chapter 90 (Oblique Incorporation and the Syntactic-vs-Lexicalist Debate).

portmanteau

A single morpheme that simultaneously realizes two or more grammatical values that would otherwise require separate morphemes. In Hokkaido Ainu, eci= is the portmanteau for first-person A acting on a second-person O (covering 1SG→2SG, 1SG→2PL, 1PL.EXCL→2SG, and 1PL.EXCL→2PL), replacing the separate first- and second-person indexes that other combinations use Tamura (1972: 27–28); Nakagawa (2024: 170, 173). See Chapter 65 (The eci= Portmanteau (1A→2O) and Second-Person Plural Syncretism).

possession / possessive

The grammatical encoding of a part-whole, kinship, or owner–property relation between two nominals. Hokkaido Ainu marks possession on the possessed noun via the affiliative suffix and/or a coreferential personal-prefix possessor; certain nouns are obligatorily possessed (see bound noun) Nakagawa (2024: 55–77); Satō (2008). See Chapter 45 (Morphophonology of the Affiliative Suffix and Echo/Copy Vowels) and Chapter 46 (Adnominal Possession: Double Marking and the Appositive Construction).

reciprocal

An argument-structure operation marking mutual action: each member of a plural set simultaneously acts on and is acted upon by the others. Hokkaido Ainu uses the prefix u- ‘reciprocal prefix’ for this function Nakagawa (2024: 204–209); Satō (2008). See Chapter 86 (The Reciprocal u-).

reflexive

An argument-structure operation in which the subject and object of a transitive verb are co-referential — the agent acts on itself or on something within its own domain. Hokkaido Ainu employs two reflexive prefixes: yay- ‘reflexive prefix’ (general action reflexive) and si- ‘reflexive/possessive prefix’ (possessive/inner-domain reflexive), with partly overlapping but distinct distributions Satō (2007); Kobayashi (2010). See Chapter 84 (The Reflexive yay-) and Chapter 85 (The Reflexive-Possessive si- and the yay-/si- Division).

relative clause

A nominally modifying clause that restricts or characterizes the head noun. Hokkaido Ainu uses a prenominal gap strategy: the relative clause precedes the head noun and contains a positional gap rather than a resumptive pronoun; the verb retains its full person marking inside the clause. The strategy covers subjects and objects with equal ease, placing Ainu high on the Keenan–Comrie accessibility hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie 1977); Nakagawa (2024: 370–383). See Chapter 103 (Relative Clauses: The Gap Strategy and the Accessibility Hierarchy) and Chapter 104 (Headless, Internally-Headed, and Noun-Modifying Clause Analyses).

reportative (evidential)

An evidential value signaling that the speaker's information derives from verbal report or hearsay rather than personal observation or inference. The Hokkaido Ainu reportative formal noun is hawe (from haw ‘voice’); the construction hawe ne predicates the clause content as something the speaker has heard reported Dal Corso (2018); Nakagawa (2024: 393–394). See Chapter 123 (hawe ne — the Reportative / Hearsay Evidential).

S, A, O (argument roles)

The three core argument roles tracked by morphological alignment systems in this grammar. S is the sole argument of an intransitive verb; A is the agent-like argument of a transitive verb; O is the patient-like argument of a transitive verb. The notation follows (Foley & Van Valin 1984) and the Leipzig Glossing Rules. See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms).

sensory evidential

An evidential encoding information received through non-visual sensation: sound, touch, smell, or an internal bodily feeling. The Hokkaido Ainu sensory formal noun is humi (from hum ‘sound, feeling’); the construction humi ne marks non-visual direct evidentiality Dal Corso (2018); Nakagawa (2024: 394). See Chapter 124 (humi ne — the Non-Visual Sensory Evidential).

situational evidential

An evidential encoding information derived from direct visual observation of an accessible, ongoing situation. The Hokkaido Ainu situational formal noun is siri (from sir ‘appearance, land’); the construction siri ne marks direct visual evidentiality. In Tokachi the evidential is further restricted to stage-level (transient) predications, with individual-level properties taking the inferential form instead Takahashi (2013); Dal Corso (2018). See Chapter 122 (siri ne — the Direct-Perception / Situational Evidential).

split intransitivity

A typological pattern in which intransitive subjects divide into two sub-classes — agentive (S_A) and patientive (S_O) — each aligned differently with the transitive argument roles. In Hokkaido Ainu the person-agreement paradigm does not itself split the intransitive subject by agentivity; the relevant split surfaces in verb classes, noun incorporation, and valency alternations Nakagawa (2024: 126–127); (Stassen 1997). See Chapter 71 (The Split-Intransitive (Active–Stative) Core).

switch-reference

A clause-linking mechanism that marks whether the subject of a subordinate clause is the same participant (SS) or a different participant (DS) from the subject of an adjacent or matrix clause. In Hokkaido Ainu the clause-linkers hine ‘conjunctive/sequential particle’ and akusu ‘consequential/switch particle’ encode a related opposition; whether this constitutes switch-reference in the strict typological sense is debated ‹contested› Nakagawa (2024: 425–440); Satō (2008: 247–256). See Chapter 133 (The hine/akusu Contrast and Switch-Reference-Like Linkage).

TAM (tense–aspect–mood)

The cluster of grammatical categories encoding temporal location (tense), internal event structure (aspect), and speaker stance toward the event (mood/modality). Hokkaido Ainu lacks an obligatory tense but marks aspect and modality periphrastically through auxiliary and particle constructions (Comrie 1976); Nakagawa (2024: 284–320). See Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview).

telicity

A lexical-semantic property distinguishing predicates that include a natural endpoint (telic: an activity with a bounded goal, e.g. 'write a letter') from those that do not (atelic: unbounded activities, e.g. 'run'). Telicity interacts with the distribution of aspect auxiliaries and with some valency alternations in Hokkaido Ainu (Comrie 1976); Takahashi (2022). See Chapter 108 (Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview).

tenselessness

The absence of an obligatory grammatical tense category — no morpheme or construction that compulsorily locates an event as past, present, or future relative to speech time. Hokkaido Ainu expresses temporal reference through adverbs, aspect auxiliaries, and context, rather than through a dedicated tense paradigm Nakagawa (2024); Satō (2008). See Chapter 109 (Tenselessness and the Time-Reference System).

transnumerality

A property of nominal number systems in which the unmarked noun form is unspecified for the singular/plural distinction, able to refer to one or more individuals without grammatical marking of that contrast. Hokkaido Ainu nouns are transnumeral; the only dedicated nominal plural element is the associative utar ‘group, people, companions’, which marks a social collective rather than a pure plurality (Corbett 2000); Nakagawa (2024: 78–82). See Chapter 41 (Nominal Number: Transnumerality, -utar, and the Locus of Plurality).

tripartite alignment

A morphological alignment pattern in which all three core argument roles — S, A, and O — are marked by formally distinct, non-overlapping morphological exponents. Two rows of the Hokkaido Ainu person paradigm display this pattern: the first-plural-exclusive (ci=/=as/ un=) and the fourth person (a=/=an/ i=) Bugaeva (2012: 472); Nakagawa (2024: 163–174). See Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms) and Chapter 72 (Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate).

valency

The number and kind of arguments a predicate requires or licenses. Intransitive predicates have valency 1 (one S argument), transitives have valency 2 (A + O), and ditransitives have valency 3. Hokkaido Ainu has a rich set of valency-changing operations: causatives and applicatives increase valency; antipassives and middle/anticausatives decrease it; noun incorporation can further reduce the effective valency of the verbal complex Bugaeva & Kobayashi (2022); Nakagawa (2024: 196–228). See Chapter 73 (Valency, Voice, and Noun Incorporation: Overview).

verb template

The fixed hierarchical ordering of morphological positions within the Hokkaido Ainu verb word. From outermost to innermost: personal-index prefixes (A/O) → applicative, causative, antipassive, reflexive, and reciprocal prefixes → the stem → stem-forming plural suffix (-pa) → personal-index suffixes (=an, =as for intransitive S) Nakagawa (2024: 183, 196–199); Tamura (1972: 35). See Chapter 56 (The Verb Word and Its Position-Class Template) and Chapter 69 (The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering).