[Lingtyp] Alignment Typology and problems with Ainu

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Hello James – There’s one trait of the Ainu pattern that matches crosslinguistic tendencies that have been observed in the literature: the fact that nominative/accusative alignment is restricted to 1SG can be explained with reference to speech act participants being the most likely to occur in the agent/actor role and least likely to occur in the patient/undergoer role. By singling out 1SG undergoers, Ainu follows the well-established principle of marking atypical referent-role mappings. Cf. Dixon (1994: 83-94).

This is the only place in the system that shows neutralization of exactly two of the three functions S, O, and A, and this neutralization occurs precisely in one of the two places where it should be most likely to occur in terms of the mapping of the animacy hierarchy to grammatical functions.

Best – Juergen

Dixon, R. M. W. (1994). Ergativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of James Wheate <jwhe6921 at uni.sydney.edu.au>
Date: Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 8:17 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Alignment Typology and problems with Ainu
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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