Chapter 38Derivational Morphology on Nouns: Diminutive, Augmentative, and Size Modification

38.1 The diminutive suffix -po and the absence of an augmentative

The principal derivational suffix operating on Hokkaido Ainu nouns for size and affect is -po ‘diminutive suffix’, which attaches to a noun stem to yield a derivative meaning 'small X' or 'dear X' Nakagawa (2024: 264–265); Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 25); Ijäs (2023). No productive augmentative suffix — a suffix encoding 'large X' — is described for Hokkaido Ainu in any of the grammatical treatments consulted. Upward size modification relies on the prenominal property verb poro ‘be big’, used attributively before a noun without morphological change (see Chapter 37 (The 'No Adjective Class' Thesis: Property Concepts as Stative Verbs)). Morphological encoding of size is therefore asymmetric: the diminutive has a suffix, the augmentative does not ‹consensus›.

Three features of -po merit individual treatment: its etymological identity with the free noun po ‘child, son’, its lexicalization into a subset of animal names where the base is no longer a free morpheme, and a Horobetsu colloquial meaning extension to 'deceased (intimate)' not reported for other dialects Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 25).

38.2 Morphology

-po attaches to the concept form of a noun stem. The output is itself a common noun in the concept form and may take the affiliative suffix in the normal way Nakagawa (2024: 264). Nakagawa explicitly excludes the suffix from compound-noun formation: a form such as cikappo is a modifier-derived nominal, not a compounding element, and the person-affix and affiliative-suffix diagnostics that distinguish compounds from modifier–noun sequences classify -po derivatives as single-word outputs that function as ordinary free nouns Nakagawa (2024: 265). The form is invariant across the Hokkaido dialects documented in the sources read here, and the suffix integrates phonologically with no reported junctural changes.

The table illustrates the range of base nouns: inanimate (supuya), animate non-human (cikap, cep), and human (menoko, okkay). For the special status of okkaypo — which is ambiguous across dialects between the DIM reading and a noun–noun reading — see the section on the po ‘child, son’ homophony below.

38.3 Semantic values: diminutive and affective

Kindaichi and Chiri describe -po as a 指小辞 meaning 'small thing / dear thing' and trace it etymologically to the free noun po ‘child, son’ Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 25). Two semantic values are present in the attested data and are recognized by subsequent treatments Nakagawa (2024: 264–265); Ijäs (2023).

The diminutive value encodes that the referent is smaller than the prototype of its class. For ceppo 'small fish' this is size in the physical sense; for supuyapo 'faint smoke' it is reduced quantity or intensity rather than spatial extent — a scalar application of the suffix to a non-count noun. The affective / hypocoristic value encodes endearment or intimacy without implying reduced size. Kindaichi's example ku=sampepo 'my dear one' (lit. 'my little heart') illustrates pure affect: the referent is a person, not a physically small object Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 25). The two values are not in complementary distribution — the same form carries both potential meanings — and context selects the dominant reading.

38.4 Corpus examples

The following attested examples from Saru and Horobetsu narrative texts show -po in productive use. In all three, the DIM derivative freely combines with the associative-plural formal noun utar ‘people, companions’ (treated in Chapter 41 (Nominal Number: Transnumerality, -utar, and the Locus of Plurality)), and in the second and third examples the prenominal property verb pon ‘be small’ stacks with the DIM derivative, confirming that the suffix and the prenominal are independent strategies. ILCAA Ainu materials (1976); Chiba University (eds.) (2015)

The Saru examples confirm that cikappo and ceppo behave as ordinary common nouns that take utar as a plurality marker ‹corpus-confirmed›. The Horobetsu example shows the same stacking in a second dialect, with the focus particle hene 'even' scoping over the entire pon cikappo utar phrase. The high frequency of okkaypo alone — 1,462 tokens, rank 136 in the Hokkaido sub-corpus — confirms that DIM derivatives are a live and frequent nominal class ‹corpus-confirmed›.

38.5 Lexicalization in animal names: isepo and the class-term question

Several Hokkaido Ainu animal names contain a synchronically opaque -po where the base noun is not independently attested as a free form. The best-known case is isepo ‘rabbit’. Two analyses have been proposed in community scholarship, both identifying -po as the diminutive suffix aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026).

One analysis holds that ise is an onomatopoeia for the rabbit's high-pitched call, so isepo originated as 'the small/dear thing that goes ise' — an expressive base plus the diminutive (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2023-12-11; palestine_2026, 2024-08-28) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹speculative›. A related line invokes the productive pattern by which an onomatopoeic base followed by -se yields a verb (compare pawse 'a fox calls', where paw is the cry, and rimse 'dance'), and treats ise in isepo as the base of such a nominalized verb with -po added (palestine_2026, 2024-08-28) aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ‹speculative›. Neither analysis has been confirmed by a read primary grammatical source; the status of ise as an independent morpheme in contemporary Hokkaido Ainu is unclear ‹speculative›.

The broader pattern of class-term residues in animal and plant names — where a frozen element meaning 'bird', 'fish', or 'tree' is embedded in a lexicalized form — is treated in Chapter 39 (Noun–Noun Compounding: Headedness, Linking, and Semantics). The -po pattern is structurally distinct: rather than a class-term head retained from a transparent compound, it is a derivational suffix that appears to have frozen at an earlier productive stage, once the base ise lost independent currency.

38.6 The okkaypo ambiguity: suffix versus noun po 'child'

The suffix -po is homophonous with the free noun po ‘child, son’, and Nakagawa attributes the homophony to a shared etymology Nakagawa (2024: 265). In okkaypo the ambiguity is productive and dialect-sensitive. In Saru and Chitose, okkay does not occur as a free noun — it appears only inside derivatives — so okkaypo parses unambiguously as [bound root okkay + DIM] 'young man'. In dialects where okkay is a free noun meaning 'man', the form is genuinely ambiguous: [okkay + DIM] 'young man' versus [okkayo 'male' + po 'child'] = 'son'. The unambiguous form for the N+N reading in those dialects is okkayopo with the full base Nakagawa (2024: 265).

The free noun po ‘child, son’ has an affiliative form poho and enters the kinship paradigm as an inalienably-possessed term: po:poho 'child — one's child' Nakagawa (2024: 222). See Chapter 48 (Kinship and Honorific Possession) and Chapter 44 (Concept Form vs. Affiliative (Possessed) Form). The grammaticalization from free noun to suffix plausibly runs through a modifier-like compounding stage ('small/dear child of' → 'small/dear instance of'), consistent with the shared affective semantics, though no read source provides a detailed trajectory ‹speculative›.

38.7 Horobetsu: -po on an intimate as 'deceased'

Kindaichi records a Horobetsu colloquial pattern in which -po attached to a term denoting an intimate acquires a 'deceased' reading: ku=akipo 'my late younger brother' and ku=kor operpo 'my late daughter' Kindaichi & Chiri (1936: 25). The semantic path from 'dear' to 'dearly departed' is pragmatically transparent — the affective value of the suffix bleeds into memorializing reference — but the extension is attested only in Horobetsu colloquial in the sources read here, and no modern grammar corroborates it for other Hokkaido dialects. It is recorded as a single-source, dialect-specific datum ‹corpus-suggested›.

38.8 Size modification without suffixation: prenominal pon and poro

The grammatical resources for noun-level size reference extend beyond -po. The prenominal property verbs pon ‘be small’ and poro ‘be big’ modify a following noun in the same position that all attributive stative verbs occupy, without morphological change Nakagawa (2024: 264) (see Chapter 37 (The 'No Adjective Class' Thesis: Property Concepts as Stative Verbs) and Chapter 42 (The Structure of the Noun Phrase)).

Three distinctions between the suffixal and prenominal strategies matter grammatically. First, -po derives a new lexical item — a common noun in the concept form — while the prenominal is a syntactic modifier that can be independently relativized, negated, and causativized: porore 'make big' (causative of the property verb) has no morphological parallel on a DIM derivative. Second, the corpus examples above show pon stacking freely with DIM derivatives (pon cikappo, pon ceppo), confirming that the two strategies are grammatically independent. Third, the suffix asymmetry — -po for small, no suffix for large — is not mirrored at the prenominal level, where poro covers large size just as freely as pon covers small. The sources do not explain the origin of this one-sided suffix system ‹consensus›.

For the wider system of noun-deriving morphology, including deverbal noun formation and the productive nominalizer suffixes, see Chapter 40 (Deverbal and Denominal Noun Derivation (Lexical Nominalizer Morphology)). For verbal number suppletives whose selection interacts with nouns headed by DIM derivatives, see Chapter 58 (Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa).