The volume is aimed at preserving invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but it possesses a huge documented stock of oral literature, yet is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages.

Revolving around but not confined to its head-marking and polysynthetic character, Ainu manifests many typologically interesting phenomena, related in particular to the combinability of various voice markers and noun incorporation. Other interesting features of Ainu include vowel co-occurrence restrictions, a mixed system of expressing grammatical relations, which includes the elements of a rare tripartite alignment, nominal classification distinguishing common and locative nouns, elaborate possessive classes, verbal number, a rich four-term evidential system, and undergrammaticalized aspect, which are all explained in the volume.

This handbook, the result of unprecedented cooperation of the leading experts of Ainu, will definitely help to increase the clarity of our understanding of Ainu and in a long-term perspective may provide answers to problems of human prehistory as well as open the field of Ainu studies to the world and attract many new students.

Table of Contents

Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama

Preface

Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama

Introduction to the Handbook of Japanese Language and Linguistics

Contributors

Anna Bugaeva

Introduction

I Overview of Ainu studies

Anna Bugaeva

1. Ainu: A head-marking language of the Pacific Rim

Juha Janhunen

2. Ainu ethnic origins

Tomomi Sato

3. Major old documents of Ainu and some problems in the historical study of Ainu

Alfred F. Majewicz

4. Ainu language Western records

José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente

5. The Ainu language through time

Alexander Vovin

6. Ainu elements in early Japonic

Hidetoshi Shiraishi and Itsuji Tangiku

7. Language contact in the north

Hiroshi Nakagawa and Mika Fukazawa

8. Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Towards a classification of Ainu dialects

Itsuji Tangiku

9. Differences between Karafuto and Hokkaido Ainu dialects

Shiho Endo

10. Ainu oral literature

Osami Okuda

11. Meter in Ainu oral literature

Tetsuhito Ono

12. The history and current status of the Ainu language revival movement

II Typologically interesting characteristics of the Ainu language

Hidetoshi Shiraishi

13. Phonetics and phonology

Hiroshi Nakagawa

14. Parts of Speech – with a focus on the classification of nouns

Anna Bugaeva and Miki Kobayashi

15. Verbal valency

Tomomi Sato

16. Noun incorporation

Hiroshi Nakagawa

17. Verbal number

Yasushige Takahashi

18. Aspect and evidentiality

Yoshimi Yoshikawa

19. Existential aspectual forms in the Saru and Chitose dialects of Ainu

III Appendices: Sample texts

Anna Bugaeva

20. An uwepeker “Retar Katak, Kunne Katak” and kamuy yukar “Amamecikappo” narrated in the Chitose Hokkaido Ainu dialect by Ito Oda

Elia dal Corso

21. “Meko Oyasi”, a Sakhalin Ainu ucaskuma narrated by Haru Fujiyama

Subject index