Chapter 106Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality: Overview

106.1 Tenselessness and the periphrastic architecture

Hokkaido Ainu has no grammatical tense. Past, present, and future reference are never read off the shape of the finite verb; the categories the verb does engage are aspect, mood, modality, and evidentiality, and even these are optional rather than obligatory inflections Nakagawa (2024: 434); Bugaeva (2012: 491, 493); Takahashi (2022). Takahashi states the point for the modern reference literature: aspect and evidentiality are not obligatory grammatical categories in Ainu, and the perfective/imperfective opposition is not fixed either lexically or grammatically Takahashi (2022); Yoshikawa (2022). The grammatical work that other languages assign to tense and bound aspect is carried here by periphrastic complex predicates: a second finite verb, an existential verb, or the copula follows the lexical verb and supplies the temporal, aspectual, or modal value. In the terms of aspectual typology and the grammaticalization of tense–aspect–mood, the system uses optional analytic operators where an inflecting language would use bound morphology (Comrie 1976); (Bybee et al. 1994). The time-reference system itself is treated in Chapter 107 (Tenselessness and the Time-Reference System); this chapter maps the forms that supply aspectual, modal, and illocutionary values and routes each to its detail chapter.

Whether a tenseless predicate has a preferred temporal translation was debated through the twentieth century. Kindaichi held that Ainu makes no temporal distinction yet renders everything as past, the moment of speech being too fleeting to fix; Chiri narrowed the past reading to non-stative predicates, leaving statives to translate as a Japanese -te iru present; and Refsing argued that a language without the category of tense does not order events on a linear timeline at all, so that no past translation is more correct than a present one Chiri (1942: 96–97); Refsing (1986: §14.9.1) ‹contested›. The descriptive consensus that displaced these positions is the one stated above: there are no pure tense markers, and a bare finite verb takes whatever English tense its event type and discourse setting require Bugaeva (2012: 491, 493).

Three constructional frames carry almost all of this load, distinguished by their shape and by which verb hosts the person index. The distinction is diagnostic: in the auxiliary frame only the lexical verb is indexed, whereas in the pair-verb frame both predicates can be, because each remains a finite verb in its own right Bugaeva (2012: 492–495); Nakagawa (2024: 306, 439–443).

One principle organizes the pair-verb frame: a verb phrase has exactly one person-bearing main verb. In ku=tere wa k=an 'I am waiting', the existential verb an 'exist' carries the same ku= as the lexical tere 'wait', so the string is two clauses linked by wa rather than a single inflected predicate. Nakagawa accordingly treats kor an and wa an not as aspect proper but as forms that express aspect-like meaning, and Yoshikawa develops the same point under the cover term "existential aspectual forms": the existential an here is less grammaticalized than Japanese iru/aru and keeps its concrete existential sense Nakagawa (2024: 442); Yoshikawa (2022) ‹contested›.

The lexical material of these frames comes from the suppletive singular/plural verb pairs that Ijäs's Lesson 9 catalogues as special verb forms — a/rok 'sit', an/oka 'exist', ek/arki 'come', arpa/paye 'go' Ijäs (2023); Nakagawa (2024: 142–151). Two of these pairs feed the TAM system directly: a/rok grammaticalizes into the perfective/anterior auxiliary, and an/oka into the existential-aspect frames, the number of the auxiliary tracking the number of the subject Nakagawa (2024: 306–308, 439–443); Bugaeva (2012: 471, 493–495) ‹consensus›.

106.2 Time reference without tense

Temporal location is recovered from four overt resources. Time adverbs such as numan 'yesterday' and nisatta 'tomorrow' place the event directly; prospective and necessity forms such as kusu ne, oasi 'surely will', and etokus 'be about to' yield future readings; the situational evidential siri anchors a visible ongoing scene in the present; and completion forms such as a, nisa, and wa isam support past translation Nakagawa (2024: 434–436). Each yields a temporal reading only relative to the moment of utterance, and context can override the default.

The same prospective frame surfaces in the grammars as intention, scheduled future, and, with a second-person subject, near-command. Ijäs glosses it 'be going to, intend to, plan to', matching Nakagawa and Satō, but her pedagogical orthography writes kusune as one word; the analysis followed here is the conjunction kusu plus the copula ne, with the one-word spelling kept as a teaching convention and carrying no separate morphological claim Nakagawa (2024: 435); Satō (2008: 85–86); Ijäs (2023).

106.3 Lexical aspect and the existential-aspect core

Before any periphrasis applies, each verb carries an inherent aspectual character that conditions which frame it enters. Nakagawa divides the lexicon into action, change, and stative verbs, a division that aligns with the actional classes Takahashi and Yoshikawa use; derivational Aktionsart suffixes on (often onomatopoeic) roots, such as -kosanu 'happen once, briefly' or -natara 'persist', add a lexically restricted second layer Nakagawa (2024: 204–208, 438); Takahashi (2022); Yoshikawa (2022). A stative verb can also be read as the change into its state, so the same lexeme may shift class: poro is 'be big' or 'become big', and the choice of aspect frame turns on that reading Nakagawa (2024: 438).

The progressive kor an joins a lexical verb, the simultaneous conjunctive kor 'while', and the existential an (plural oka). With action verbs it marks an action in progress; with change verbs it marks the process leading into the change; and it covers habitual and repeated situations as well Nakagawa (2024: 440–441); Satō (2008: 196–197); Bugaeva (2012: 494). Because the construction is a clause chain, the lexical verb and an share the subject index:

The resultative wa an joins a lexical verb, the sequential conjunctive wa, and the existential verb, and denotes the state that exists after a change Nakagawa (2024: 439–444); Satō (2008: 197–199); Bugaeva (2012: 494–495). Satō draws the selectional line sharply: an action verb leaves no direct result for wa an to predicate, so action perfects fall to the auxiliary a instead, and only change and stative verbs enter wa an Satō (2006: 63); Satō (2008: 198).

Perception and cognition verbs such as nukar 'see' and eramuan 'understand' take either frame, and how the contrast should be stated is unsettled. Nakagawa's 1981 account separates nukar kor an from nukar wa an by active observation against passive coming-into-view; Satō rejects activeness as primary and derives the contrast from continuation of action against continuation of result, treating any activeness as a contextual by-product. Nakagawa concedes the matter needs further discussion Nakagawa (2024: 445–446); Satō (2006: 65) ‹contested›. A dialect-specific restriction compounds the picture: in Tokachi, kor an does not co-occur with a first-person subject, the progressive of a first-person subject using kan an instead; no equivalent is reported for the southern dialects Takahashi (2022) ‹contested›.

Several dialectal continuatives occupy the same field. Saru and Chitose kane an adds a noteworthy-situation nuance, while Shizunai and Samani use it as a plain merger of kor an and wa an; Tokachi and Ishikari have kan an, and Tokachi tek an Nakagawa (2024: 446–449); Satō (2006: 84–85). Yoshikawa groups these with wa an and kor an as existential aspectual forms — forms that may express aspectual meanings without being grammatical aspect Yoshikawa (2022). The full treatment of the progressive and resultative belongs to Chapter 108 (The Existential-Aspect System: kor an Progressive and wa an Resultative-Perfect), the appearance-based and merged continuatives to Chapter 110 (The 'Appearance' Continuative: siran, siri…, and kane an), and the iterative and habitual periphery to Chapter 111 (Phasal, Iterative, and Habitual Aspect).

106.4 Completion, anteriority, and the admirative

The auxiliary a (plural rok), grammaticalized from the verb a/rok 'sit', is the most disputed member of the system, and the disagreement is substantive rather than terminological. The Kindaichi–Tamura tradition reads it as perfective or past; Bugaeva and Satō read an actional perfect that, on Satō's account, cannot combine with a negative and so leaves the stative perfect to wa an; Nakagawa, following Yoshikawa, denies it is tense or aspect at all, taking it to mark an event set in contrast to a following one; and Yoshikawa's handbook chapter analyses it as perfective with a direct-evidential, witnessed-reminiscence component Bugaeva (2012: 493); Satō (2006: 63); Nakagawa (2024: 306–307); Yoshikawa (2022) ‹contested›.

The admirative aan (plural rokoka) forms a tidy paradigm against a. It signals that, at some reference point, the speaker recognizes after the fact what an earlier situation was, often with surprise; Yoshikawa analyses it as perfect plus indirect evidentiality, with mirativity as an extension, where a is perfective plus direct evidentiality, the two echoing the direct/indirect past of Classical Japanese ki and keri Yoshikawa (2022); Bugaeva (2012: 493).

The plural rok-oka is the strongest internal argument that aan is the auxiliary a plus existential an, since it pairs the plural of a with the plural of an. The singular surface forms vary by locality — anan in Chitose, awan in Horobetsu and Tokachi, haw'an in Shizunai — and Yoshikawa grants that some invite alternative segmentations, so the unified a + an etymology rests on the plural rather than on every singular form Nakagawa (2024: 307–308); Yoshikawa (2022) ‹contested›.

Completion has a wider periphery than a. The recent perfect nisa marks an event just finished, and the completive pair verbs wa isam and wa okere carry the lexical traces of isam 'be absent' and okere 'finish', patterning with clause linkage because both members can stay person-bearing predicates Nakagawa (2024: 312, 452–453); Bugaeva (2012: 493, 495). Ijäs's Lesson 9 records a repeated a ... a pattern as prolonged continuity; this is the reduplicated perfective with an iterative value, and the full account of a, its reduplication, and aan is given in Chapter 109 (The Perfective/Anterior Particle a (a, a…a, aan)) Nakagawa (2024: 307–308); Ijäs (2023) ‹corpus-confirmed›.

106.5 The modal field

Modality is distributed across the auxiliary, transitive-verb-auxiliary, and final-particle layers, with epistemic, ability, deontic, and desiderative values occupying different positions in the clause Nakagawa (2024: 305–319, 421–426); Bugaeva (2012: 493–495).

Epistemic nankor marks probability or conjecture, and with a second-person subject and final na it softens into expectation or command Nakagawa (2024: 311). Ijäs gives the same range — 'must have' on a past event, 'probably' on a future one — and adds an etymology from a verb 'be trustworthy'; no source read for this account confirms that derivation, and it is best left as her own suggestion Ijäs (2023) ‹speculative›.

Ability is expressed through the transitive-verb-auxiliary group, whose negative is lexical rather than built with somo. easkay gives general ability, eaykap the broad inability (lack of skill or of circumstance), and koyaykus the specifically circumstantial inability; the scalar ka 'even' may intervene, especially under negation. Ijäs treats easkay and eaykap correctly as a lexical positive–negative pair Nakagawa (2024: 314–316); Ijäs (2023) ‹consensus›.

Deontic necessity and permission draw on several sources: the auxiliary easirki expresses obligation, kuni an expectation or 'should', and conditional predicates such as yak pirka 'should', yak wen 'should not', and yakka pirka 'may' express advice and permission Nakagawa (2024: 309–310, 423–424). The full inventory belongs to Chapter 116 (Deontic Necessity and Obligation (kuni ne, kus ne)), the ability auxiliaries to Chapter 115 (Abilitative easkay / eaykap (Ability and Possibility)), and the epistemic and desiderative forms to Chapter 117 (Epistemic Modality, Dubitative, Intentive, and Irrealis).

106.6 Directive and hortative mood

The direct imperative to a singular addressee is the bare verb with no second-person subject prefix; object prefixes may remain, and adding a second-person subject affix is ungrammatical. A plural or polite addressee takes final yan, number-sensitive verbs using the plural stem, and the softener hani or a benefactive wa kore 'do for (me)' turns the command into a request Nakagawa (2024: 421–423). Ijäs's command lesson matches these points and warns explicitly against the second-person subject affix Ijäs (2023) ‹consensus›.

Prohibition is formed by a preverbal prohibitive adverb, most often Saru and Chitose iteki, with dialect variants itekke, etekke, and ecikki. The adverb precedes both imperatives and indirect command forms such as kusu ne na and nankor na Nakagawa (2024: 424–426).

The hortative uses the final particles ro, rok, or no, distributed by dialect, after a fourth-person verb. This is the main directive environment in which the fourth person expresses an addressee-inclusive 'we' Nakagawa (2024: 334–335). Imperative and prohibitive are developed in Chapter 112 (Imperative and Prohibitive (Directive Mood)), the hortative and optative in Chapter 113 (Hortative, Optative, and Cohortative), and the person base in Chapter 61 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms).

106.7 Boundaries with evidentiality, negation, and clause linkage

TAM and evidentiality are adjacent systems because several aspect forms carry evidential or mirative values. The perfective a has been analysed as direct evidential, aan as indirect-evidential and mirative, and the situational siri frame anchors a visible ongoing event in present time Yoshikawa (2022); Nakagawa (2024: 435). The formal-noun evidential system — ruwe ne, siri ne, hawe ne, humi ne — is treated in Chapter 118 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema), with the central member in the inferential ruwe ne.

Scope ordering keeps the two systems distinct. The evidential predicate sits above clause-internal aspect and modality but below the clause linkers, so kusu ne ruwe ne is well formed while *ruwe ne kusu ne is not, and negation goes inside the frame, as in … somo ki ruwe ne 'it is a fact that one does not …' Nakagawa (2024: 393). In the ability domain negation is lexicalized as eaykap or koyaykus, and prohibition uses the iteki adverbs, so both belong to the negation system as well as to mood.

Clause linkage supplies the connective material of the periphrastic frames. The sequential wa that chains events appears in wa an, wa isam, and wa okere, and the simultaneous kor of adverbial clauses appears in kor an. When the second predicate keeps its person marking and verbal properties, the construction retains the shape of a linked predication, which is why the existential-aspect frames stand between aspect and clause chaining. The linking grammar these forms recruit is set out in sequential wa and simultaneous kor.