We have been slowly learning more and more complicate sentence structures. Until lesson 8, we learned how to say simple sentences and finally in lesson 8, we learned conjunctions and how to link together two clauses. In this lesson, we will learn about relative clauses in Ainu.
As you hopefully already remember, there are no adjectives in Ainu, only verbs. Until now, we have learnt how to say 'the box is red' and 'the girl is young' type of sentences, in which the English adjectives (to be red, to be young) are expressed with intransitive verbs in Ainu (hure, pewre). I think I have already slipped in a couple of sentences that have the descriptive/stative verb as modifier, that is, 'the red box' or 'the young girl' type of noun clauses. In Ainu, this is done exactly the same way as you would modify a noun with an adjective in English by just placing the descriptive/stative verb in front of the noun: hure suwop 'the red box' and pewre matkaci 'the young girl'. (Compare with suwop hure 'the box is red' and matkaci pewre 'the girl is young.')
In a fact, you can do exactly the same thing with any Ainu verb. This is actually the way Ainu handles relative clauses: just place the verb (phrase) in front of the head noun of the relative clause. In English, you'd need a relative pronoun (which, who, whose, that, etc.) after the head noun and the relative clause comes after that. In Ainu the order is opposite; first the relative clause and then the head. There is no need for relative pronouns like in English.
First, we will look how to use descriptive intransitive verbs as modifiers, which is really simple, as we saw above. I will also give you a big list of descriptive verbs that often match with English adjectives to build up your vocabulary. Then we'll look how to make relative clauses with other than descriptive verbs. We'll start with relative clauses that have one of the core arguments (subject, direct object, indirect object) as the head noun and then how to do the same thing with adjuncts (from where, to where, with which, etc.) because the latter have some peculiarities we need to learn.
Modifying a noun with a descriptive/stative verb is very simple: just put the descriptive/stative verb in front of the noun, just like you would do with adjectives in English. For example, the word for 'to be black' in Ainu is kunne, so 'a black cat' is kunne cape. I think I have actually already done this in some example sentences before and if you just have studied them without noticing anything special, that's probably because you expected this kind of structure to be possible based on English.
If you want to modify the noun with several descriptive/stative verbs, you just enumerate the verbs in front of the noun: asir ironne kanpisos 'new, thick book'. If you think about English, you might want to try to put a conjunction, such as wa 'and then', between the verbs but this is not necessary and—in the lack of examples of this kind of use—might even be ungrammatical in Ainu. Ainu doesn't, however, seem to have a preference in which order the different types of modifiers should be stacked in front of the noun. There are for example documentation of both poro retar seta 'big white dog' and retar poro seta 'white big dog.' In English, the order is very well established (always: (determiner,) opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose); 'white big dog' just feels wrong, because size must come before the color!
There is one rule, though. Notice that if the noun is an alienable noun preceded by possessive kor , the modifying descriptive/stative verb comes before ku-kor/e-kor/kor 'my; your; her/his/its': pon ku-kor cape 'my small cat', literally 'small my cat'. This is different from English. In the case of inalienable nouns in possessive form, the modifier comes of course in front of the noun with person marker attached: pewre ku-poho 'my young son'.
It's probably a good time to list the most common descriptive/stative verbs of Ainu at this point. At the start of the list, there are verbs that come in pairs with opposite meanings. The verbs at the end of the list don't have a clear opposite and don't come in pairs or I just don't know what's the word of its pair in Ainu. Descriptive verbs for color terms are talked in a bit more detail in the next subsection, so they are not included in the list (well, black and white are, but anyway).
As you can notice, there are many English concepts that don't turn easily into Ainu. For example, English has the word 'shallow' but in Ainu, you need to know what is shallow, so that you can choose the correct word to use from the three possible options (ohak 'to be shallow (of water)', kasre (to be shallow (of a hole), okasaske 'to be shallow (of a container)'). It's very usual that concepts used in one language don't map perfectly with the concepts of another language.
I'll update the list if I notice word(pair)s that are still missing.
poro (VI STAT) 'to be big; to be large' ←→ pon (VI STAT) 'to be small; to be little'
pirka (VI STAT) 'to be good; to be beautiful' ←→ wen (VI STAT) 'to be bad; to be poor'
asir (VI STAT) 'to be new' ←→ husko (VI STAT) 'to be old (of a thing); to be antiqued'
pewre (VI STAT) 'to be young' ←→ onne (VI STAT) 'to be old (of age)'
poniwne (VI STAT) 'to be younger (than)' ←→ kiyanne (VI STAT) 'to be older (than)'
tanne (VI STAT) 'to be long' ←→ takne (VI STAT) 'to be short'
ri (VI STAT) 'to be high; to be tall' ←→ ram (VI STAT) 'to be low'
keweri (VI STAT) 'to be tall (of stature)' ←→ keweram (VI STAT) 'to be short (of stature)'
tuyma (VI STAT) 'to be far' ←→ hanke (VI STAT) 'to be close'
sep (VI STAT) 'to be spacious; to be wide; to be vast' /para (VI STAT) 'to be broad; to be extensive; to be wide' ←→ hutne (VI STAT) 'to be narrow; to be cramped'
peker (VI STAT) 'to be bright; to be light' ←→ kunne (VI STAT) 'to be dark'
ruwe (VI STAT) 'to be thick (circumference of objects, as an insult about humans) ' ←→ ane (VI STAT) 'to be slender; to be fine; to be thin (usually of plants, also about humans)'
kapar (VI STAT) 'to be thin (of an object)' ←→ ironne (VI STAT) 'to be thick; to grow thickly'
mimus (VI STAT) 'to be fat (of humans, animals)' ←→ sattek (VI STAT) 'to be thin (of humans, animals)'
siretokkor (VI STAT) 'to be beautiful' ←→ ipokas (VI STAT) 'to be ugly'
askanne (VI STAT) 'to be clean' ←→ icakkere (VI STAT) 'to be dirty; to be filthy' / turus (VI STAT) 'to be dirty; to be covered in dirt'
meman (VI STAT) 'to feel cool; to be cool' ←→ popke (VI STAT) 'to feel warm; to be warm'
merayke (VI STAT) 'to feel cold; to be cold' ←→ sesek (VI STAT) 'to feel hot; to be hot'
hawke (VI STAT) 'to be calm; to be gentle; to be mild; to be moderate' ←→ ruy (VI STAT) 'to be intense; to be fierce; to be strong; to be violent; to be furious' / yupke (VI STAT) 'to be tough; to be harsh; to be severe; to be hard'
ataye hawke※※※ (EXP) 'to be cheap; the price (of something) is cheap' ←→ ataye ruy※※※ (EXP) 'to be expensive; the price (of something) is expensive'
iyaykipte (VI STAT) 'to be dangerous' ←→ apunno <verb>※※※ 'to <verb> safely'
numaus (VI STAT) 'to be hairy' ←→ tontone (VI STAT) 'to be bald; to be hairless; to be furless'
sik (VI STAT) 'to be full; to be filled'←→ oha (VI STAT) 'to be empty'
matne※ (VI STAT) 'female (of animals and things)' ←→ pinne※ (VI STAT) 'male (of animals and things)'
yaykopuntek (VI STAT) 'to be happy' ←→ kewtum oknatara※※※ (EXP) 'to be sad'
isayka (VI STAT) 'to be easy; to be simple' ←→ hokanpa (VI STAT) 'to be difficult; to be hard'
tunas (VI STAT) '(1) to be early (2) to be fast; to be quick' ←→ moyre (VI STAT) '(1) to be late (of time) (2) to be late; to fall behind schedule; to be delayed (2) to be slow'
nitan (VI STAT) 'to be be fast walker; to be fast (at moving); to be swift (at moving)' ←→ siwente (VI STAT) 'to be slow walker; to be slow (at moving); to be sluggish (at moving)'
iwanke (VI STAT) 'to be healthy; to be in good health; to be lively' ←→ siyeye (VI STAT) 'to be sick; to be ill' / sinki (VI STAT) 'to be exhausted; to be tired'
yaymonniska (VI STAT) 'to be busy' ←→ yaytekkisma (VI STAT) 'to be not busy; to be free; to be idle; to be unoccupied' / monuturu an※※※ (EXP) 'to be fee; to be available; to have time at one's hands'
kasre (VI STAT) 'to be shallow (hole in the ground; hollow; dent; etc.)' ←→ rawne (VI STAT) 'to be deep (hole in the ground; hollow; dent; etc.); to be profound'
ohak (VI STAT) 'to be shallow (of water; river)' ←→ ooho (VI STAT) 'to be deep (of water; river)'
okasaske (VI STAT) 'to be shallow (of container)' ←→ orawne (VI STAT) 'to be deep (of container)'
kapke (VI STAT) 'to be flat; to be level; to be even' ←→ putke (VI STAT) 'to be swollen out; to be puffed; to be bulging'
tanas (VI STAT) 'to be bulging; to be projected; to stick out' ←→ kotne (VI STAT) 'to be dented in; to be caved in'
kosne (VI STAT) 'to be light (of weight)' ←→ pase (VI STAT) '(1) to be heavy (2) to be valuable; to be important'
hapur (VI STAT) 'to be soft; to be tender; to be fragile' ←→ niste (VI STAT) 'to be hard; to be tough; to be hard to break'
riten (VI STAT) 'to be soft; to be supple; to be flexible; to be elastic' ←→ nitne (VI STAT) 'to be hard; to be solid'
sawre (VI STAT) '(1) to be loose; to slacken (2) to slack; not to work diligently' ←→ yupke (VI STAT) 'to be tightly fastened'
tumsak (VI STAT) 'to be weak; to be powerless' ←→ tumkor (VI STAT) 'to be strong; to be powerful'
iramkoyki (VI STAT) 'to be mean; to bully; to tease; to make fun of people; to ridicule' ←→ ramuhawke (VI STAT) 'to be nice (of a person); to be kind; to be gentle; to be amiable'
wayasnu (VI STAT) 'to be clever; to be smart; to be good at talking' ←→ wayasap (VI STAT) 'to be stupid; to be slow thinker; to be bad at talking'
nispane (VI STAT) 'to be rich; to be affluent; to be wealthy' ←→ isram※※ (VI STAT) 'to be poor; to be needy'
canan (VI STAT) 'to be ordinary; to be common; to be plain; to be unimportant; to be unremarkable' / yayan※ (VI STAT) 'to be normal; to be common' ←→ sisak (VI STAT) 'to be rare; to be unusual; to be unique; to be exceptional; to be remarkable'
iruska (VI STAT) 'to be angry; to be on a bad mood; to take offense; to be sulky; to feel incomfortable; to be irritated' ←→ ramuriten (VI STAT) 'to be on good mood; to be cheerful; to be joyful; to be merry; to be glad; to be pleased' / nucaktek (VI STAT) 'to be happy; to be cheerful; to be merry; to be joyful'
teyne (VI STAT) 'to be wet' / rikan (VI STAT) 'to be moist; to be damp' ←→ sat (VI STAT) 'to be dry'
ratci (VI STAT) '(1) to be calm; to be peaceful (2) to be quiet' ←→ pepunitara (VI STAT) '(1) to be lively; to be bustling (2) to be loud; to be noisy'
retar (VI STAT) 'to be white' ←→ kunne (VI STAT) 'to be black'
nupur (VI STAT) 'to be strong (of flavor, smell)' ←→ pan (VI STAT) 'to be mild; to be tasteless'
topen (VI STAT) 'to be sweet' ←→ runnu (VI STAT) 'to be salty'
keraan (VI STAT) 'to be tasty; to taste good; to be delicious' ←→ kerawen (VI STAT) 'to be bad (of taste); to taste bad; to be unpalatable'
siw (VI STAT) 'to be bitter (of taste)'
niwrotke (VI STAT) 'to be sour (of taste)'
parkar (VI STAT) 'to be spicy; to be spicy hot'
mismu (VI STAT) '(1) to be lonely; to long for company (2) to be bored'
aeramasu (VI STAT) 'to be fun; to be funny; to be interesting'
iiyomapka (VI STAT) 'cute; pretty; adorable; lovely; sweet'
Next a word about the colors in Ainu. Traditionally, Ainu had only four colors: retar 'to be white', kunne 'to be black; to be dark', hure 'to be red; to be orange; to be purple', and siwnin 'to be green; to be blue; to be yellow' (that might be quite new word and might be a loan from Russian синий (sinij). According to Tamura (2000: 264) the typical color the word hure 'to be red' represents is blood and siwnin 'to be blue; to be green; to be yellow' is grass in southern Hokkaido, in which Saru variety also belongs to (in northern Hokkaido the typical color is that of water. Also, in the eastern Hokkaido varieties siwnin is used rather in the form siynin. This doesn't concern us, because were are studying here the Saru variety that is a southern variety).
Tamura (2000: 264) also lists the following color terms that are used often in everyday interactions: ekurok 'pitch black', nikap iro 'orange' (Lit. 'the color of tree bark'), humun iro 'green' (Lit. fresh grass color), konkane iro 'golden', and sirokane iro 'silver'. The words ending with iro 'color' are nouns, so if you want to use them to describe the color of something, you need to attach the copula ne 'to be' after them, or maybe a verb like us 'something is attached to something' could work, too. The words konkane 'gold' and sirokane 'silver' are often use as-is to make noun compounds: konkane pisakku 'a gold(en) laddle' and sirokanipe 'silver drops' (the form sirokani is used in Horobetsu variety and some other varieties; sirokane in Saru variety and some other varieties). Pink and grey can be formed by adding ru- 'slightly' in front of hure and retar/kunne, so ruhure 'pink' and ruretar '(pale) grey' and rukunne '(dark) grey'.
It might be that the concept of color hasn't been that important for Ainu and the word for 'color' itself used today is a loan from Japanese: (N-AFF) iro; iro; iroho (notice that the word has affiliative forms, so color is consider an inalienable property). Then there is the word tom (VI) 'to shine; to sparkle; to glitter; to glow'. Since it is an intransitive verb, it can be converted into a noun with the meaning 'shine; glitter; glow', and more broadly 'hue; tint; shade of color'.
Of course, with the society changing and new ways of looking at things entering the Ainu culture, also the need to express the colors more precisely has arisen (mainly based on Japanese way to categorize colors that has in turn been strongly influence by the European sense of color). So, how do you distinguish green and yellow and blue (siwnin) or red and orange and purple (hure)? Well, there are some locally used words that can divide the colors in more refined categories. In Obihiro region, the word for 'yellow' is sikerpepeus (Lit. (the color of) the liquid of the berries of Amur cork tree attached). This has been adopted by some Saru speakers in the contemporary vocabulary they use. Another word that is sometimes used for 'green' in the Saru region is hukinatomne (Lit. to be of the hue/glow of fresh leaves). Other words for green, or especially grass green, are humun iro '(the color) green; (fresh) grass green' and kinapetomne 'to be green; to be grass green.' If the person uses the words sikerpepeus 'to be yellow' and hukinatomne 'to be green' (or the other words to specify green), they probably use the word siwnin to refer to blue only. There is also a word for brown kenepetomne 'to be brown' (Lit. to be of the hue/glow of the liquid of an alder tree), but to my understanding this is not well entrenched.
Tamura (2000: 265) also notices that there are of course means to express more precisely the exact color of something and lists the following very specific color terms as examples: ooho pet iro 'the color of a deep river', yukermu kurka neno an iro 'the color that is like the back of a (certain type of) mouse', tumu kurot siwnin 'to be shadow green' (Lit. lingering inside the shadows green), and ponno ruhure retar 'to be a bit pinkish white'.
Then there are newly coined words made quite recently, for example, homane 'to be orange' (Lit. to be (like) salmon roe), surkune 'to be purple; to be violet' (Lit. to be (like) aconite/wolfsbane), and makayone 'to be light green' (Lit. to be (like) sprout of Japanese butterbur). In addition, the word toyne (Lit. to be(come) (like) dirt) has been assigned the meaning of 'to be brown'. Toyne can be found in some old documentation in the meaning of 'to be terrible' and 'to look bad' (can be also found used in the context of the color of face of a sick person and translated into Japanese as massao/真っ青 'to be pale'), so the adding the meaning of brown is a semantic extension to the existing word. (You can read more about these in a paper a wrote some years ago: "Language revitalization through lexical modernization and neologism-coining : The current state and future tasks of modernizing Ainu lexicon". The color terms are discussed on pages 138–139.)
The newly coined and/or adopted words toyne 'to be brown', homane 'to be orange', surkune 'to be violet', and makayone 'to be light green' are bit problematic from the point of view of Ainu word formation and meaning. As we can see from the other color terms above, Ainu as the first language speakers tended rather to form the color terms with description of the color (eg. deep river) and then adding the word iro 'color' and followed optionally us 'to be attached' or ne 'to be (like); to become (like)'. Another option is to modify the phrase tomne 'to be of the hue/glow of ...' with the description of the color. It might also be OK to use just the verb us 'to be attached' after the color description (as in sikerpepeus 'to be yellow').
Now, there are indeed several intransitive nouns that originate in 'noun + ne' combo. One of them is even a color term: kunne 'to be black; to be dark' comes probably from kur 'shadow' and ne 'to be (like)'. Other examples from our big list of descriptive/static intransitive verbs are tontone 'to be bald' from tonto 'leather; tanned hide' and ne 'to be (like)', tanne 'to be long' maybe from root word tam 'long sword; saber' or tar 'rope' and ne 'to be (like)', and takne 'to be short' probably from tak 'lump; clump; bundle' and ne 'to be (like)'.
So, then, what is wrong with the newly coined homane 'to be orange', surkune 'to be violet,' makayone 'to be light green', and the new use of toyne 'to be brown'?
Well, first, as said before, the color terms usually use other means of word formation than just attaching ne 'to be (like)' after nouns. While I'm not opposed to neologisms in anyway (on the contrary, I think they are fun and useful!), coining neologisms in a case of lesser used minority languages is always something you should do really carefully. There are always people who oppose creation of new vocabulary to their beloved language. However, while languages do have group ownership, they are not anyone's personal property, and the speakers have a right to use it as they like and create the new words they want. Anyway, it's always best to try to avoid unnecessary conflicts, and usually it's easier to convince the conservatives not to complain about the newly coined words—and maybe even accept them—if their formation follows the traditional way of thinking as closely as possible. So, this is about authenticity and credibility of the new words in the eyes of the (potential) speakers of the language.
The second reason is related to semantics (meaning) and the word-formation methods of Ainu. If you consider carefully the meaning of the existing intransitive verbs with noun+ne pattern, you will notice that they describe a state. For example, let's look at the four descriptive verbs I talked already about above:
Kunne (originally in the meaning of 'to be(come) dark'—also 'night'—and then meaning is extended to 'to be(come) black') means that the state of surroundings becomes/has become like a shadow, that is, dark.
Tontone 'to be(come) bald' means that the state of appearance (or maybe even the feel when touched?) of something has become like tanned leather, there are no hair anywhere.
Tanne 'to be long' and takne 'to be short' describe the state of objects' appearance (and maybe even the feel when you touch them with your hands?): it is/has become like a saber or rope (that is, long) or like a clump (that is, short).
There are plenty of other similar examples, too. However, none of these types of descriptive verbs describe color. So, if you say homane, it more likely means the state of the appearance (or feel) of something has become like salmon roe; maybe a bit slimy and slippery or maybe it refers to the size and shape of the individual eggs. Surkune is a bit trickier than that. Surku refers indeed to the aconite plant. The plant is poisonous, so surku also has another general meaning: 'poison' (surkukarus 'poisonous mushroom' etc.). The word surkune, makes you immediately think of 'poison' instead the color of the flowers of the plant. So, maybe it would be better to stick to the traditional color term formation methods with this one, and make it rather surkuiro(ne/us) or surkutomne or even change surku to some other flower that doesn't have that strong association with poison but has violet/purple flowers, such as ento (a type of galingale) or kosa (a type of arrowroot). The word toy means 'dirt' or 'soil' but it has another meaning: it is a prefix that intensifies the meaning of the word it is attached to and also add often gives the word negative nuance. This is probably the meaning that is used in the original meaning of the word toyne 'to be horrible; to look bad'. So, if you are terribly busy, you can be toyyaymonniska and if you are exhausted, you are toysinki. In addition, there are already words for orange and brown in Ainu (I don't know how frequently they have been used, but they do appear in dictionary, though), so is there really a need for these two new words?
Anyway, Ainu is being revitalized at the moment, and this is a part of the language that is expected to change and evolve a lot during the revitalization and reclamation process. So, only the future shows what happens to these neologisms: will they become a part of the stable Ainu vocabulary, and if they do, with which meanings, or will they be forgotten and re(re)placed the existing words or will something completely different happen with color terms.
That was a long explanation about the colors in Ainu. Finally, here's a list of the most commonly used terms discussed above. The newly coined ones discussed above are marked with ※.
retar (VI STAT) — to be white
ruretar (VI STAT) — to be light grey
kunne (VI STAT) — to be black
rukunne (VI STAT) — to be dark grey
ekurok (VI STAT) — to be pitch black
hure (VI STAT) — to be red; to be orange; to be purple
ruhure (VI STAT) — to be pink
nikap iro ne/nikap iro us (VI STAT) — to be orange
※ homane (VI STAT) — to be orange
※ surkune (VI STAT) — to be purple; to be violet
siwnin (VI STAT) — to be blue; to be green; to be yellow
sikerpepeus (VI STAT) — to be yellow
humun iro ne/humun iro us (VI STAT) — to be green; to be (fresh) grass green
hukinatomne (VI STAT) — to be green
kinapetomne (VI STAT) — to be green; to be grass green
※ makayone (VI STAT) — to be light green; to be lime green
konkane iro ne/konkane iro us (VI STAT) — to be golden
sirokane iro ne/sirokane iro us (VI STAT) — to be silver
kenepetomne (VI STAT) — to be brown
toyne (VI STAT) — (1) to be horrible; to be terrible; to look bad (2) ※ to be brown
I'm not going to give too many examples here, because using the descriptive/static verbs as noun modifiers is so straightforward. Anyway, here are some.
toan ekasi icakkere turus amip mi. inunukaski!
That old man is wearing dirty filthy clothes. I feel sorry for him!
ku-kor kunne pon cape ranma mokor.
My small black cat always sleeps.
tanpe sonno parkara aep ne korka keraan humi!
This is really spicy food but it tastes good!
How about other verbs than descriptive/static verbs then? It's not just the descriptive/stative verbs that can modify a noun; the same thing can be done with any verb in Ainu. This is the way Ainu handles relative clauses. So, if you say in English 'the boy who walks', in Ainu, you say apkas hekaci 'the boy who walks' (or, if it feels better and easier to grasp with similar word order: 'the walking boy'.) In English, in most cases, you need to use a relative pronoun between the noun and the verb but in Ainu, there are no relative pronouns.
Actually, we have been already sneakily doing this since lesson 4! We learned that the word kor is used in possessive expressions. Well, this kor is the same kor that is a transitive verb with the meaning 'to have something; to own something'. And when you attach a person marker to it and place it in front a noun, you form a relative clause. So, what we have learnt this far to mean 'my book' (ku-kor kanpisos) or 'your cat' (e-kor cape) are actually relative clauses 'the book that I own' and 'the cat that you have'.
The relative clauses with subject or object as the head noun can be easily turned back into full sentences. For example, 'the walking boy' or 'the boy that walks' apkas hekaci, can be turned back into hekaci apkas 'the boy walks' and 'my book' or 'the book that I have' ku-kor kanpisos into kanpisos ku-kor 'I have the/a book'. When there are more than one arguments, there are of course more than one relative clauses that can be turned back into the same non-relative sentence. For example, both matkaci e topenpe 'the sweets that the girl eats' and topenpe e matkaci 'the girl that eats the sweets' turn both back into matkaci topenpe e 'the girl eats sweets'.
The verb e 'to eat something' is a 2-argument verb (transitive verb) and it has two slots in front of it, as discussed in lesson 3. In the case of a relative clause, one of the slots for arguments is filled by the noun preceding the verb. While only one of the slots in front of the verb is filled with an argument, the another slot or the "gap" left in front of the verb can be filled with what comes after the verb or the head noun of the relative clause. This is why relative clauses can be turned back into an alternative non-relative phrasing. These type of relative clauses are called gapped adnominal clauses and the same type of strategy in relative clause forming can be find in other East Asian languages, such as Japanese and Korean, too.
3-argument verbs/ditransitive verbs are a bit trickier. If you'd just apply the same rule as we learned above—just take the object or subject of a sentence and put it after the verb to make it the head for the relative clause—some confusing cases would arise. When the head noun for the relative clause is the direct object of the non-relative sentence, there is usually no confusion because direct objects are typically items or non-animated things. For example, the relative clause huci hekattar nure oruspe 'a story that the grandma tells the children' is a clear case; it goes back to huci hekattar oruspe nure 'the grandma tells the children a story'. It's clear from the word order of the relative clause that the storyteller (subject) is the grandma and the listeners (indirect object) are the children.
But if you would make one of words referring to people (huci or hekattar) the headword, it would be unclear who is the subject/actor and who is the indirect object/receiver of the action in 3rd person. This is why, the subject of a ditransitive/3-argument verb can't become the head noun of a relative clause just like this, only the objects (direct and indirect), or at least, no examples of the subject being the head word have been found up until now. That being the case, huci oruspe nure hekattar, means 'the children to whom the grandma tells the story', and it can't be interpreted as 'children who tell the grandma a story'*. The word hekattar is the head noun of the relative clause, so it must be either the direct object or the indirect object of the sentence with alternative non-relative phrasing, and meaning-wise it's very unlike that it would be the direct object, so it must be the indirect object.
Now that we know how to connect sentences with conjunctions and know how to form relative clauses, we know already how to form quite complex sentences in Ainu. We can now form sentences, in which both the subject and object(s) are relative clauses and we can link these sentence together with conjunctions to form really long sentences. Let's see some examples.
ku-nukar kanpisos
the book that I read
numan ku-nukar kanpisos ku-hunara.
I looked for the book that I read yesterday.
numan ku-nukar kanpisos ku-hunara korka teta oar isam kusu ku-turaynu.
I looked for the book that I read yesterday but it's not here, so I didn't find it.
ku-suwe ohaw
the stew that I cooked
poronno nepki acapo
the uncle that works a lot
poronno nepki acapo ku-suwe ohaw yaykopuntekno e.
The uncle that works a lot happily ate the stew that I cooked.
sisam itak k-epakasnu menoko utar
the women, to whom I teach Japanese
sisam itak k-epakasnu menoko utar earkinne arikikpa.
The women, to whom I taught Japanese, did their best.
sisam itak k-epakasnu menoko utar earkinne arikikpa wa kusu tane opitta eramuoka.
The women, to whom I taught Japanese, did their best, and now they they've learnt everything.
So, what if you want to say something like 'the man who teaches the children Ainu comes here tomorrow?' If you can't make the subject of a 3-argument verb into the head of relative clause, how should you express this kind of meaning then? Well, to be honest, I don't know. You can try to rephrase what you want to say, for example into 'a certain man teaches the children Ainu and that man comes here tomorrow' (sine okkayo hekattar aynu itak epakasnu hine ne(a) okkayo nisatta teta ek), which a bit strange thing to say but you can't help it. Sine 'one' is a numerical that is used to modify nouns, which means, it can't be used alone as a noun (ex. 'I have one'). The independent 'one' is sinep (ex. 'I have one' sinep ku-kor). Ne(a) 'that (already mentioned); afore mentioned' is an adnominal that refers back to what has been said before (so it's anaphoric), while the words tan 'this' and toan 'that' refer to the location (so, they're deictic). As usual, more of the both later.
OK, now we know how to make relative clauses in which the subject or object of the corresponding non-relative sentence is the head noun. What if you want to say 'the restaurant that I went to' or 'the knife that I cut the fish with'? If you would try to phrase those two as, let's say, k-arpa ipeusi* or cep ku-tuypa makiri*, what would they even mean? It's difficult to understand the meaning because the case particles and the postpositional particles that show us the role of the head nouns are gone. You would assume that the head noun is either in nominal (subject) or accusative (object) case in the form they are presented now, and with that interpretation the clauses make no sense.
The clauses are also grammatically incorrect: arpa 'to go' is an intransitive/1-argument verb but, because, in relative clauses, one of the arguments is the slot in front of the verb and one of the arguments (the head word for the relative clause) comes after the clause, it looks as if you try to give two arguments to a verb that can only take one. The same goes with tuypa 'to cut'; it's a transitive/2-argument verb, so it can only take two arguments but the relative clause attempted above suggests that there are three arguments (two in the slots in front of the verb and one after). So, what should we do?
When the head of a relative clause is not an argument (subject or object) but an adjunct (that is, in the alternative non-relative phrasing it is followed by a case particle or a postpositional particle), you need to use the case particles and the postpositional particles also in the relative clause if the head noun is a locative (ta), allative (un), traversal (peka(no)), terminative/allative (pak(no)), instrumental (ani), comitative (tura(no)), or dative adjunct (eun). I can't find any examples with ablative (wa(no)) but I assume it behaves the same. The mutative ne 'in (the role of); as' is also a mystery to me, because ne is so common word in Ainu that in the absence of a proper corpus, in which you can choose the particular part of speech you want to find, it's nearly impossible to find examples of a certain (assumably very rare) use of ne.
Now we know that we need to use the oblique case particles/postpositional adverbs also in the relative clauses. But then, another problem arises. Let's say you want to say something really simple, for example, 'It's the restaurant where I went to' or 'It's the knife that I cut the fish with'. If you follow the instructions above to make the Ainu relative clauses, you probably assume that you should attach the relevant case particles after the head nouns of the relative clauses, like so: k-arpa ipeusi un or cep ku-tuypa makiri ani. We have been using the copula ne since the first lesson, so you can probably guess, that we want to add the copula after the relative clauses to make them mean 'It's the restaurant where I went to' or 'It's the knife that I cut the fish with': k-arpa ipeusi un ne* or cep ku-tuypa makiri ani ne*. These are both ungrammatical sentences, you can't use the the case particles and the postpositional particles with the copula like that, copula can only be used with plain nouns.
So, what you need to do is to move the case particles or the postpositional adverbs at the beginning of the relative clause. By doing so, our example sentences become oro un k-arpa ipeusi ne 'It's the restaurant that I went to' (Literally: 'there I went restaurant it is') or ani cep ku-tuypa makiri ne 'It's the knife I cut fish with' (Literally: with it I cut the fish knife it is'). The relative clauses can be turned back to non-relative phrasing as ipeusi un k-arpa 'I went to restaurant' and makiri ani cep ku-tuypa 'I cut the fish with a knife'.
Notice that the case particles denoting movement (ta, un, wano, pekano) are dependent words and they can't be used without a locative noun to attach to. So, you need to fill the place of the locative noun with something and in the case of case particles of movement in relative clauses, it's always the generic relational noun oro 'at the place of'. This was already mentioned in the lesson we talked about or/oro, but notice also that the relational noun is in its long form, oro, because it's separated from the noun it relates to (in our example ipeusi 'restaurant'). (This is at least true in theory, but you can see some exceptions (or ta; or un, etc.) in the documented old stories etc.)
You can review the Ainu case particles and postpositional adverbs denoting case through the following links:
The traversal particle peka(no) 'here and there in; all around'
The terminative postpositional adverb pak(no) 'until; to; up to'
The instrumental postpositional adverb ani 'by means of; using'
The comitative postpositional adverb tura(no) 'together with'
turano k-ek k-akihi
my younger brother, whom I came together with
turano Tokiyo un k-ek k-akihi tane Amerika ta an.
My younger brother, whom I came to Tokyo together with lives now in America.
oro un e-arpa ipeusi
the restaurant that you went to
oro un numan e-arpa ipeusi ta keraanpe poronno an.
There are many tasty dishes in the restaurant that you went yesterday to.
oro ta cukue ku-hok ihokcise
the shop, at which I bought the desk
"oro ta cukue ku-hok ihokcise pirka ihokcise ne korka cihoki ataye ruy" sekor ku-yaynu.
I thought: "the shop, at which I bought the desk, is a good shop but I think the prices of the products are high."
ani cep e-tuypa makiri
the knife with which you cut the fish
ani cep e-tuypa makiri sonno een na yayitupare yan hani.
The knife with which you cut the fish is very sharp, so please be careful.
ani k-otopihi ku-nuykar kiray
the comb that I brush my hair with
ani k-otopihi ku-nuykar kiray ku-isamka na asir kiray hok wa en-kore yan.
I lost the comb with which I brush my hair with, so please buy me a new comb.
eun ku-nu usi ka isam. (adapted from Bugaeva 2017)
There was no place (where) I (could) ask about (it). (Literally: ‘there was no place towards (where) I could ask.’)
The words ending with usi 'a place to habitually (do something)' all considered as place nouns, so you don't need to attach or '(at) the place of; on; in; inside' after them if you want to use locational particles with them. The words like this, for example ipeusi 'restaurant; cantine' above, come themselves originally from relative clauses. For example, ipeusi comes from the verb ipe 'to have a meal' modifies the word usi 'a place to habitually (do something)' and it can be translated literally as 'the place where (people) have meals'. We learn more about usi and other formal nouns like usi in the next lesson.
The word yayitupare 'to be careful about something' is often pronounced without the /i/ in fast speech: /yaytupare/.
The verb nu has a basic meaning of 'to hear something' but it can also mean 'to ask about something'. This might seem strange but if you think it in a way that the most important thing is not the act of asking itself but hearing the answer, it might make more sense. So, in example 23, there was no place to hear about the things that you asked and wanted to know about.
Last, a bit more detailed explanation about why I'm not sure about how to handle the ablative wa(no) 'from' and the mutative ne 'in (the role of); as'. I wrote earlier that I can't find any examples of ablative or mutative adjuncts being used as a head noun for a relative clause. Wano is a case particle, so if it appears in a relative clause, we can expect it to appear in the form oro wa(no). Now, if you search oro wa for example of at the Ainu language archive of the National Ainu Museum, you'll get hundreds of hits. When you look at those a bit more carefully, you'll notice that majority of them is about another use of oro wa we have already learnt in lesson 7. This oro wa has been turned into an adverb or a conjunction with the meaning 'and then; after that.' It originally comes of course from the same combo of oro '(at) the place of; on; in; inside' and wa 'from' that we are talking about here. To make the difference clear, I tend to write the adverb/conjunction orowa together as a single word and the literal, grammatical pattern separately in two words as oro wa. Anyway, the transcribers of NAM Ainu Archive don't have rule like that and, as a result, I haven't been able to find the 'from which' oro wa we want to see here. I assume that you can turn for example the sentence maciya wa okkayo ek 'the man came from the city' into a relative clause oro wa okkayo ek maciya 'the city which the man came from'.
Ne used in a relative clause is even more difficult to find, but maybe, and this a really strong maybe, you can turn a sentence such as huci moyuk ne yaykar 'the old woman turned herself into a tanuki (raccoon dog)' into a relative clause ???ne huci yaykara moyuk 'the tanuki that the old woman turned herself into'. The original use of ne has been its use as copula, A equals B. However, it hasn't only been grammaticalized into the mutative particle/postpositional adverb but also into an adnominal ne 'the afore mentioned; that (already mentioned)', also in the form of nea (SG) and nerok (PL). Adnominals are words that modify nouns and they can only appear in front of nouns. So, when I see a sentence starting with ne huci yaykara moyuk, my brain tries to interpret the ne not as a case particle/postpositional adverb but as an adnominal and the meaning would become something like 'that afore mentioned old lady turn herself tanuki', which is weird. So, to put it short, I don't know how to use ne 'in (the role of); as'' in relative sentences. Maybe you can add oro in front of ne to make the meaning clear. Uwa! ('dunno!')
As usual, here is a summary of the contents of this lesson.
Relative clauses with core-arguments (subject, direct object, indirect object) as the head noun
Relative clauses in Ainu are formed by placing a verb phrase in front of the head noun
The noun that comes after the verb, fills in one of the slots of the verb
intransitive verbs/1-argument verbs: 0 slots in front of the verb, 1 slot after the verb
transitive verbs/2-argument verbs: 1 slot in front of the verb, 1 slot after the verb
ditransitive/3-argument verbs: 2 slots in front of the verb, 1 slot after the verb
however, only the objects (direct or indirect) can become the head noun of the relative clause
The relative clauses are "gapped adnominal clauses" and can be turned back into an alternative non-relative phrasing
Ex. Relative clause: kam e seta 'the dog that eats meat', alternative non-relative phrasing: seta kam e 'the dog eats meat'
Modifying nouns with descriptive/static intransitive verbs in Ainu
Works just as modifying a noun with an adjective in English: place the modifier in front of the noun
Intransitive verbs, so no slot in front of the verb, 1 slot after the verb
Ex. hure nonno 'red flower'; tanne ru 'long road'; poro cise 'big house'; mismu okkayo 'lonely man'; runnu ohaw 'salty soup'
The basic colors in Ainu are retar 'to be white', kunne 'to be black', hure 'to be red/orange/purple', and siwnin 'to be blue/green/yellow'
other color terms are not necessarily so commonly used and/or are neologisms
The relative clauses with non-core-arguments/oblique cases as the head noun
Non-core-arguments don't fill any slots of the verb, the core arguments fill the slots in front of the verb
intransitive verbs/1-argument verbs: 1 slot in front of the verb, 0 slots after the verb
transitive verbs/2-argument verbs: 2 slot in front of the verb, 0 slots after the verb
ditransitive/3-argument verbs: 3 slots in front of the verb, 0 slots after the verb
The case particle/postpositional adverb must be retained
placed at the beginning of the modifying clause
eg. cip ani k-o 'I ride the boat' → relative clause: ani k-o cip 'the boat that I ride' (Lit. 'the boat with which I ride'); hekattar turano e-arpa 'you went with the kids' → relative clause: turano e-arpa hekattar 'the kids with which you went'
when the head noun of a case that is marked with a case particle, the generic/neutral relational noun oro 'at the place of' must be placed in front of the particle in the relational clause
eg. kotan ta k-an 'I live in a village' → relative clause: oro ta k-an kotan 'the village in which I live'
The use of oro wa(no) 'from which' and ne 'as which; into witch' are quite unclear, so it's maybe better not to use these
Now that we have learnt how to form relative clauses in Ainu, the sentences we can make (and understand!) have become quite complex.
There is another thing we need to learn that resembles relative clauses in form: Noun-complement clauses and content clauses. These give us even more wider toolbox of expression because we can make a whole sentence to a sort of an object of a verb. So, we will learn to say things like 'I like the fact that I don't have to work during the summer,' or 'I know that you won't come back', "when I was young, I went to Italy'. Very useful indeed. Noun-complement clauses and content clauses will be covered in the next lesson.
Created on 2023/2/17, Latest update on 2025/3/9