Impersonal Constructions in Ainu
The impersonal “passive ” in Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects employs the transitive construction, while the impersonal “passive ” in Central Hokkaido employs the transitive construction for third and first person Undergoers and the intransitive construction for second and indefinite person Undergoer...
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.622.1426 http://cblle.tufs.ac.jp/assets/files/publications/working_papers_02/section/055-072.pdf |
| Summary: | The impersonal “passive ” in Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects employs the transitive construction, while the impersonal “passive ” in Central Hokkaido employs the transitive construction for third and first person Undergoers and the intransitive construction for second and indefinite person Undergoers. This fact gives extra support for Shibatani’s idea (1990: 60) that “the Ainu passive represents a case of change from a transitive construction to an intransitive construction”. It is likely that Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects have retained an older pattern of impersonal and that Central Hokkaido Ainu dialects have been documented exactly at the stage of shift from impersonal “passive ” to genuine passive. Therefore it is hardly surprising that even in Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects the discourse function of the impersonal “passive ” is not just defocusing Actor – a typical function of impersonals, but also focusing on Undergoer and focusing on the result of action, the latter two are characteristic of the genuine passive. The formation of the impersonal “passive ” in Ainu appears to be sensitive to the topicality hierarchy second person> first person> third person, i.e. in the Ishikari dialect, the Undergoers which are higher on the topicality hierarchy trigger the construction with more properties of the prototypical passive. 1. Genetic, dialectal and typological profile of Ainu Ainu is a critically endangered language of unknown genetic affiliation which shows considerable dialectal variation. The three primary divisions are geographically based, and distinguish between the dialects once spoken on Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kurile Islands. Sakhalin and the Kuriles form part of the Russian Federation today, with Hokkaido being the last autochthonous location of native speakers. The Hokkaido dialects can be roughly divided into Northeastern (Northern, Eastern, and Central) and Southwestern (Southern – indicated with a square in Figure 1 and Southwestern) groups, which are further subdivided into local ... |
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