Chapter 69The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering

69.1 The position-class template

The cell values of the personal-index paradigm — which forms exist and what morphological alignment each person row exhibits — are established in Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms). This chapter examines how those indexes are ordered on the verb word: which positions they occupy relative to the stem, how that ordering relates to valency-changing morphology, and what the positional difference between subject prefixes and subject suffixes entails for the verb's internal structure. The chapter covers the personal-affix layer of the verb; the full verb word template, including TAM, negation, and nominalization layers, is treated in Chapter 56 (The Verb Word and Its Position-Class Template). Bugaeva (2006: 3)

The table is a positional map, not a template in which every slot must be filled. Most verb forms contain only the stem and one index; a verb with a third-person subject and third-person object shows no overt personal material. The outer number layer is relevant here because it supplies an ordering diagnostic for the right edge: material that follows a fully person-inflected form belongs outside the personal-affix template, even where earlier descriptions treated comparable segments as person markers Nakagawa (2024: 151–159); Bugaeva (2012: 471, 481); Satō (2023: 39–40).

69.2 The left personal layer: A and O prefixes

When a transitive verb is inflected for a non-third subject, the A index occupies the leftmost position in the word: 1SG ku=, 1PL.EXCL ci=, 4th/indefinite a= or an=, 2SG e=, and 2PL eci= all stand before the stem. Object indexes are prefixal across all persons: 1SG en=, 1PL.EXCL un=, 4th i=, and 2SG/2PL e=/eci= stand before the stem when overt Nakagawa (2024: 166–170); Bugaeva (2012: 471).

The left personal layer is outside the valency-prefix layer. Applicatives ko-, e-, and o-, the reflexive and reciprocal prefixes yay-, si-, and u-, and the detransitivising prefix i- all attach closer to the root than any personal index. The detransitivising i- must be kept apart from the homophonous 4th-person object prefix i=: the two occupy different positions, carry different boundary symbols, and have distinct etymological histories; the detransitiviser is treated in Chapter 83 (The Antipassive / Detransitive i-). Valency morphology derives a transitive or intransitive base from the root, and the personal indexes appear outside that derived base, indexing its arguments Tamura (1972: 35); Nakagawa (2024: 196–199); Satō (2023: 40).

The 4th-person A prefix shows a dialectal split within the left personal layer. Saru and the western dialects use a= exclusively; Tokachi, Ishikari, Shiranuka, and Samani favour an= under locally varying conditions, and Nakagawa takes an= to be the older form Nakagawa (2024: 167–168). Both shapes occupy the same left-edge position ‹consensus›.

69.3 The right personal layer: =as and =an

Two subject indexes appear at the right edge of the inflected verb: 1PL.EXCL =as and 4th/indefinite =an. Both mark S on intransitive verbs and follow any stem-internal suffix. Their transitive-subject counterparts, ci= and a=/an=, stand in the left personal layer. This side-switch — suffix on an intransitive S, prefix on a transitive A — is the positional basis on which Bugaeva calls these two rows tripartite: each keeps A, S, and O formally and positionally distinct Nakagawa (2024: 166–167); Bugaeva (2012: 472); Bugaeva (2008: 32).

All other persons keep their subject index on the left. First singular ku= marks both S and A as a prefix, opposed to the object en=. Second-person e= and eci= are neutral — the same form serves A, S, and O — and always prefixal. Third person is zero in all roles. The portmanteau function of eci= for a first-person A acting on a second-person O is a separate rule and is developed in Chapter 65 (The eci= Portmanteau (1A→2O) and Second-Person Plural Syncretism). The right personal layer is the exclusive domain of the two side-switching rows ‹consensus›.

69.4 Ordering with valency morphology and number suffixes

Valency-changing material and the stem-forming plural occupy positions between the root and any right-edge person suffix. The causatives -re, -e, and -ka, and the stem-forming plural -pa, all follow the root and precede =as or =an. A causativised intransitive, for example, yields a derived stem to which the right-edge person suffix then attaches: the personal layer is outside the valency layer in both directions Nakagawa (2024: 196–199); Satō (2023: 40).

The clearest ordering diagnostic for the right edge comes from Nakagawa's minimal pair with iki 'do'. Hokkaido has a stem-forming plural suffix -pa that attaches to the root, and in Saru, Chitose, and Ishikari an outer plural auxiliary pa that follows the person-inflected form. The pair contrasts their positions directly:

Sakaguchi formalises the inside/outside distinction as a clitic diagnostic: a marker is a clitic when it attaches to the fully person-inflected form, an affix when it attaches to the root. He applies this to Sakhalin Ainu, where the verbal plural =hci appears outside the inflected verb and the root-attaching plural suffix -pa inside it Sakaguchi (2024: 12, 77–85, 163). His criterion bears on the Hokkaido outer pa by extension from a Sakhalin-focused analysis ‹contested›. The verbal number system, the pa/ci auxiliary alternation across dialects, and the interaction with suppletive stems are treated in Chapter 70 (Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement) and Chapter 58 (Verbal Number: Suppletive Stems and the Pluractional -pa).

69.5 The two-index ceiling

A finite verb hosts at most one subject index and one object index. No additional personal prefix or suffix is possible regardless of how many semantic participants the predicate involves. The restriction is most visible in three-place predicates: with kore 'give', recipient and theme cannot each receive an overt index. When both are third person, neither is indexed and both surface as bare noun phrases Nakagawa (2024: 363–365); Satō (2023: 39, 47).

When a non-third participant is present with a three-place predicate, the object index is assigned to the human recipient. Satō analyses this as a secundative pattern, treating the recipient as the selected undergoer of the indexing slot; Nakagawa frames the same verbs as three-place predicates with two bare object phrases that may occur in varying word order, and neither obligatorily indexed when both are third person Satō (2008: 147); Satō (2023: 40, 47); Satō (2025: 368–371); Nakagawa (2024: 363–365) ‹contested›. Object-indexing rules and the recipient-vs-theme selection are developed in Chapter 66 (Object Indexing: Monotransitive and Ditransitive Clauses).

The ceiling also determines how reflexive and reciprocal derivations interact with personal marking. Once yay-, si-, or u- occupies the internal argument position as part of a derived stem, the verb is indexed according to its derived valence; a separate object index for the same participant would exceed the cap and is ungrammatical Tamura (1972: 35); Nakagawa (2024: 183, 196–199). Satō uses this two-index restriction to argue that a zero third-person index must be posited in the paradigm, so that the cap is stateable uniformly, in disagreement with Nakagawa's earlier position that third person has no affix Satō (2023: 39); Satō (2025: 369); Nakagawa (2024: 169) ‹contested›.

69.6 Clitic and affix status of the personal indexes

The boundary symbol = used throughout this grammar at personal-index junctions is a notational convenience, not a settled morphological claim. Nakagawa employs = for all person markers as a convenience mark explicitly decoupled from phonology and syllable structure Nakagawa (2024: 49). Tamura and Satō write the same markers with hyphens. Bugaeva grades the indexes into three classes on prosodic and separability grounds Bugaeva (2012: 472–473):

Nakagawa arrives at a comparable assessment of =an through a different route. His 分離人称 (separated-person) data show =an detached from its verb by the additive particle ka or the topic marker anak — a separability property he characterises as clitic or 倚辞 status, possibly tracing the form to the existential verb an 'exist' Nakagawa (2024: 183):

Sakaguchi's 2024 thesis on Sakhalin Ainu draws a formal distinction between affix boundaries (-, root-attaching) and clitic boundaries (=, attaching to the fully person-inflected form). Under his analysis the 4th-person =an/an= is classified as highly autonomous and clitic-like, while 1PL.EXCL -as is treated as a root-attaching affix — a verdict that parts from Bugaeva, who places =as in the same word-like class as =an Sakaguchi (2024: ix, 62–64, 77–85, 101, 163); Bugaeva (2012: 472–473) ‹contested›. Sakaguchi's systematic diagnostics were developed for Sakhalin material; the only explicitly Hokkaido application in that work is the clitic status of the outer verbal plural pa in Saru, Chitose, and Ishikari, derived from Nakagawa's inside/outside ordering criterion. A dedicated clitic/affix study of Hokkaido person-marking at comparable rigour has not been produced; the Hokkaido boundary gradation rests on Bugaeva's prosodic classification and Nakagawa's separability data ‹contested›. The boundary analysis is taken further in Chapter 72 (Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate).

69.7 The Ijäs learner template

Ijäs's online pedagogical grammar presents the same left-right ordering for L2 learners, grouping person indexes as the verb's obligatory argument positions and treating noun phrases as optional outer constituents Ijäs (2023). The framing correctly reflects the head-marking character of the system: the verb carries the obligatory participant indexes while the independent pronouns are optional Satō (2025: 361); (Nichols 1986). Her examples are constructed teaching forms, not corpus attestations, and she writes personal-index boundaries with hyphens as a pedagogical convention.

Two features of the Ijäs presentation are pedagogical conventions rather than grammatical generalisations. Her word-order guidance for ditransitives treats the indirect object as occupying a fixed position between subject and direct object — a useful classroom rule that does not correspond to a syntactic constraint; Nakagawa's data on three-place predicates allow the two bare object phrases to appear in varying orders Nakagawa (2024: 363–365). The zero-marking of third-person transitive arguments in her examples is factually accurate but theoretically neutral: it is compatible with Nakagawa's position that there is no third-person affix and with Satō's posit of a zero index required by the two-index ceiling Nakagawa (2024: 169); Satō (2023: 39); Satō (2025: 369) ‹contested›.