[Lingtyp] Alignment Typology and problems with Ainu

[James Wheate]

Hello everyone!

My name is James Wheate and I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Sydney.

I write to you all today as I am facing major problems with a language (Ainu) that I am looking at for one of my classes on Linguistic typology.

The problem in question is, Ainu is attested to having 3 separate alignment systems  (Bugaeva, 2015) that are determined by pronouns. Alignment in Ainu is shown through verbal affixing alone, with the following distribution:

1PL, 4SG/’Indefinite person’ are marked using tripartite alignment:

1PL:
S                  ci-
A                 -as
O                 un-

4SG:
S                  a-
A                 -an
O                  i-

1SG is marked with nom/acc alignment:

S/A            ku-
O               -en

Lastly,  2SG, 2PL, and 3SG have ‘neutral’ alignment (so none at all, more so just indexing) in the following way:

2SG:
S/A/O         e-

2PL:
S/A/O         eci-

3SG:
S/A/O         ∅-



As far as my understanding goes, not only is the distribution in Ainu very uncommon, but the motivations for these groups and systems to arise seem unclear.

With these systems it allows me to assume there is a hierarchy as follows:

1PL/4SG -> 1SG -> 2SG/2PL/3SG

As far as I am aware this would be extremely rare and hard to explain.

Has anyone else encountered anything similar in other languages? Is there perhaps a diachronic explanation that leads to this morphological complexity?

As an undergraduate I am at my wits end!

Thank you all very much and as the years progress, I hope I can become more active and knowledgeable on this thread!

Regards,

James Wheate.



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