Lesson 3: Expressing actions in Ainu part 2

Transitive and ditransitive Ainu verbs

This is the third lesson of the basics of Ainu grammar. In this lesson, we take first a look at how to express the past, present, and the future time with Ainu verbs and learn some important adverbs of time.

On top of that, you'll learn how to say things like 'I eat meat' or 'you saw a bird' in Ainu, that is, you learn how to use transitive verbs in Ainu sentences. Transitive verbs are verbs that can have one object (= target of the action).

But that's not all! You will also learn how to say 'I give the flower to the girl' or 'you taught the child Ainu.' Verbs like 'to give' or 'to teach' are called ditransitive verbs and they can have two objects: direct object (= target of the action) and indirect object (= usually a person, who is somehow affected by the action).

The last part of this lesson is to introduce some adverbs of manner, so you can start to make more sophisticated sentences in Ainu.

The time in Ainu verbs

In English, when you want to specify the time when an action happens, you have to change the form of the verb or add an auxiliary verb to get the meaning across: 'I slept', 'I sleep', 'I will sleep'. In Ainu, the verb can express the past, the present, and the future as it is. So, ku-mokor can mean that the action of sleeping happened in the past, happens now, or will happen in the future.

But how do you know then what the speaker means? Well, you have to think about the context or the information you can infer from the surrounding facts. If the phrase ku-mokor is an answer to the question 'What did you do last night?', you can assume this ku-mokor means 'I slept'. If it is a reply to the question 'What's your plan for next weekend?', you can safely assume it means 'I will sleep', and so on.

There are people who say that Ainu verbs inherently express the past time and the present and the future are just exceptions. The logic behind this is that people do talk more about what they and other people have done than about their future plans. I find it easier for some reason to translate the verbs in the present tense rather than the past, but do remember that without further context, all the example sentences given in these lessons can also express the past time. This goes, for example, for all the sentences in the lesson 1 and the lesson 2.

There are some explicit ways to express that the action has happened in the past or will happen in the future but we will learn more about those when we learn about auxiliary verbs in a later lesson.

It is much easier to infer time time of action if the verbs are used together with time expressions. That's why we learn next some adverbs of time and other time related words.

Adverbs of time

Let's take a look at some common adverbs of time. Depending on the sentence, there are several options for the English translations (past, present, or future) but I have shown here only one of them for clarity.

Examples 1

Vocabulary 1

  • esir (ADV) — a moment ago
  • ku- (PM) — the first person singular subject marker, 'I do'
  • mokor (VI) — to sleep
  • tane (ADV) — (1) now; just now; a moment ago; soon; in a moment (2) already
  • somo (ADV) — not
  • nani (ADV) —soon
  • kanna (ADV) — again
  • na (ADV) — still; still more; (not) yet
  • teta (ADV) — here
  • iruka (ADV) — for a short time
  • an (VI) — to be (somewhere); to exist
  • kanna suy (ADV) — again; another time
  • ye (VT) — to say something; to speak something (a language) 
  • ohonno (ADV) — for a long time
  • sinot (VI) — to play; to have fun

The meaning of tane 'now' is a bit difficult to grasp because it refers to a bit wider time than English, spanning from recent past ('just now', 'a moment ago') to the moment at hand ('right now') and to near future ('very soon', 'in a moment'). In addition, it can mean 'already', which can be confusing: has the thing already happened or is it happening now? Again, the context will tell a lot and also verb forms tane is used with (we haven't learnt these yet).

Another set of important time adverbs are of course related to different units of time: days, months, and years. Here is a list of time expressions in Ainu.

  • to (N) — day
  • cup (N) — month
  • pa (N) — year

  • tokap (N) — daytime
  • kunne (N) — nightime
  • kunneywa (N/ADV) — morning
  • tokap noski (N/ADV) — noon 
  • onuman; ukuran (N/ADV) — evening
  • ancikar (N/ADV) — night

  • tanto (N/ADV) — today
  • numan (N/ADV) — yesterday
  • hoskinuman (N/ADV) — the day before yesterday; two days ago
  • nisatta (N/ADV) — tomorrow
  • oyasim (N/ADV) — the day after tomorrow
  • oyasim simkehe (N/ADV) — in three days; two days after tomorrow

  • tancup (N/ADV) — this month
  • hoskicup; hoski isam cup; tancup etoko un cup (N/ADV) — last month
  • os ek cup (N/ADV) — next month

  • tanpa (N/ADV) — this year
  • hoskipa (N/ADV) — last year
  • hoskianpa (N/ADV) — the year before last; two years ago
  • oyapa (N/ADV) — next year

  • kesto (N/ADV) — every day
  • kescup; cup pisno (N/ADV) — every month
  • kespa (N/ADV) — every year

As you might have noticed, there is no word for 'week' on the list. Ainu lacks a lot of modern vocabulary and the word for 'week' is one of those words. There are some suggestions, however, how to express the meaning of 'week' in Ainu. I'm aware of three different suggestions, but there might be even more.

They ones I know are tosay, toikir, and ikitto. All these new words are compounds with the word to 'day' and other words. Tosay means literally 'a row of days' (say means 'a row; a line'), toikir's literal meaning is 'a collection of days' (ikir means 'a collection of something; a batch; a bundle; a clump') and ikitto has the components the other way around (ikitto < ikir to: the last /r/ in ikir is assimilated to the following /t/ of to and it becomes /t/). I think all of these are nice words, but I personally probably like tosay the best.

If the apply the patterns we can see the time expressions for days, months, and years above to the new word for week, we get

If there is no entrenched word for week, there are not words for days of the week either. There seems to be a strong tendency to use calques (loan translations) from Japanese, though. These newly coined words for weekdays are:

  • kunnecupto (N) — Monday
  • apeto (N) — Tuesday
  • wakkato (N) — Wednesday
  • nito or cikunito (N) — Thursday
  • konkaneto (N) — Friday
  • toyto (N) — Saturday
  • tokapcupto (N) — Sunday

The Ainu words for day's of the week are constructed like this: (you can just skip this and the next paragraph if you are not intrested in these kinds of things): The Japanese days of the weeks refer to different planets and celestial bodies: The Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the Sun (exactly like most of the Indo-European languages, but in Germanic languages—such as English, German, and Swedish—the reference is not the actual planet but an old Norse god associated with the planet). The Moon is in Japanese getsu (月) when used as a part of loan words of Chinese origin and similarly the Japanese word for the Sun is nichi (日). The names of the planets appearing in the day's of the week are in Japanese kasei (火星) 'Mars' or literally 'the fire (火) planet (星),' suisei (水星) 'Mercury' or 'the water planet,' mokusei (木星) 'Jupiter' or 'the wood planet,' kinsei (金星) 'Venus' or 'the gold planet', and dosei (土星) 'Saturn' or 'the earth planet.' So, Monday in Japanese is literally 'the day of the moon' (JPN: 月曜日/getsuyōbi), Tuesday is 'the day of the fire' (JPN: 火曜日/kayōbi, the planet part (星/sei) is dropped off in these), Wednesday is 'the day of the water' (JPN: 水曜日/suiyōbi), Thursday is 'the day of the wood' (JPN: 木曜日/mokuyōbi), Friday is 'the day of gold' (JPN: 金曜日/kinyōbi), Saturday is 'the day of earth' (JPN: 土曜日/doyōbi) and Sunday is 'the day of the Sun' (JPN: 日曜日/nichiyōbi).

These literal meanings of the Japanese days of the week have been then translated into Ainu: kunnecup means 'the Moon' in Ainu and as we just learned, to means 'day,' so kunnecupto is constructed to mean 'Monday'. The same way, the Ainu word ape means 'fire,' so 'Tuesday' becomes apeto; the Ainu word wakka means 'water,' so 'Wednesday' becomes wakkato; the Ainu word ni or cikuni means 'tree; wood,' so 'Thursday' becomes nito or cikunito; the Ainu word konkane means 'gold,' so 'Friday' becomes konkaneto; the Ainu word toy means 'earth; dirt; soil,' so 'Saturday' becomes toyto; and the Ainu word tokapcup means 'the Sun,' so 'Sunday' becomes tokapcupto.

As I said before, the words for week and the days of the week are neologisms (new coinages) and not necessarily widely used in the Ainu speaker community. It might be that in five years the community has decided on some other words for these concepts and then you just have relearn the new words. This is how it's like learning a non-standardized language under revitalization! 😄

Transitive verbs

Here are some examples of how to use Ainu transitive verbs. These verbs take two arguments: a subject (the person who does) and the object (the thing that is the target of the action). The adverb of time usually goes to the beginning of the sentence.

Examples 2

Vocabulary 2

  • numan (ADV) — yesterday
  • hekaci (N) — boy
  • cep (N) — fish
  • koyki (VT) — to tease something/someone; to catch something
  • kesto (ADV) — every day
  • matkaci (N) — girl
  • aynu itak (N) — Ainu language
  • ye (VT) — to speak something; to say something
  • nisatta (ADV) — tomorrow
  • amip (N) — clothes
  • ku- (PM) — the first person singular subject marker, 'I do' 
  • huraye (VT) — to wash something
  • ohonno (ADV) — for a long time
  • ekasi (N) — grandpa; grandfather; old man
  • kanpisos (N) — book
  • hunara (VT) — to search for something; to look for something
  • kunneywa (N/ADV) — morning
  • wakka (N) — water
  • e- (PM) — the second person singular subject marker, 'you do' 
  • ku (VT) — to drink something

The word order of Ainu

In the examples above, you can see that Ainu language sentence structure or Ainu language word order is SOV, that is subject-object-verb.

Knowing this, some of the examples might be a bit confusing: How can I claim that the word order in number 3 and 5 is SOV when the object comes before the subject?

Let's look at the sentence number 5 (kunneywa wakka e-ku. 'You drink water in the morning.') as an example. In this sentence, wakka 'water' is the object and e- 'you' is the subject. I think I have mentioned this earlier, but personal pronouns are rarely used in Ainu sentences. This is because the person marker on the verb is compulsory and using the personal pronoun would be extra work; you would need to convey the same information twice but that would be very uneconomical. Ainu is a so-called pro-drop language, which means it likes to drop off its pronouns when possible. So, the full version of the sentence (and now I will reveal the first person personal pronouns to you!) would be kunneiwa eani wakka e-ku, literally 'in the morning you water you-drink'. Sentence number 3 would be nisatta kani amip ku-huraye, literally 'tomorrow I clothes I-wash'.

If it makes it easier for you, you can think that Ainu verbs have a certain number slots in front of them depending on the verb type: the intransitive verbs have one slot, the transitive verbs have two slots, and as we learn in the next section, ditransitive verbs have three slots. In other words, intransitive verbs are 1-argument verbs, transitive verbs are 2-argument verbs, and ditransitive verbs are 3-argument verbs (there are also avalent verbs or 0-argument verbs that don't have any slots at all. These verbs express mainly meteorological phenomena or weather).

But there is more. You can think that Ainu verbs themselves have pockets attached to the verb itself. The verb prefers to have its arguments in its pockets rather than the slot outside of the verb. That's why eani wakka ku* (no person marker) is unacceptable and wrong but wakka e-ku (with person marker) is OK. 

Or, you can think that the third person actually is there, but as mentioned in the lesson 2, it is not marked, because third person's person mark is zero. So, if we put the linguists' zero mark (∅) in our example sentence, we get wakka e-∅-ku, literally something like 'water you-it-drink'. Now you can see that the word order indeed is correct, it is SOV (subject-object-verb) after all! So, in other words, the verb wants you to first fill the pockets attached to the verb itself and if necessary, you can fill the slots in the way that it matches the things you have put in the verb's pockets.

This might be a bit difficult concept for English speakers to grasp and we'll come back to the topic many times in the coming lessons.

Ditransitive verbs

Ditransitive verbs are verbs that have three arguments: subject (the person who does), indirect object (the person who is affected by the action somehow), and direct object (the thing that is the target of the action). The indirect object comes between the subject and the object. Here I show you how to use these verbs with the first and the second persons as subjects only, because we need to learn more about person markers before we can express the first and the second persons as objects. So, for now I just give a couple of common examples using the third person only and the first and the second persons as subjects.

Examples 3

Vocabulary 3

  • huci (N) — grandma; grandmother; old lady
  • matkaci (N) — girl
  • aynu itak (N) — Ainu language
  • epakasnu (VD) — to teach something to someone
  • menoko (N) — woman
  • hekaci (N) — boy
  • icen (N) — money
  • kore (VD) — to give something to someone
  • ekasi (N) — grandpa; grandfather; old man
  • okkayo (N) — man
  • imoka (N) — a present; a souvenir
  • ekoyayirayke (VD) — to thank someone for something
  • numan (ADV) — yesterday
  • seta (N) — dog
  • topenpe (N) — sweets
  • ku- (PM) — the first person singular subject marker, 'I do' 
  • hekattar (N) — children
  • sisam itak (N) — the Japanese language
  • e- (PM) — the second person singular subject marker, 'you do' 

I haven't been writing about this before, but most of the Ainu nouns can be interpreted as both singular or plural. I have used the singular in most of my translations this far. For example, the vocabulary list above has the words imoka and seta and their English meanings are given as 'a present; a souvenir' and 'dog'. But actually, they can be either singular or plural, 'a present' or 'presents' or 'a dog' or 'dogs', depending on the context. So, the translation of the example sentence 3 could be 'The old man thanks the man for the presents' or the translation of the example sentence 4 'I gave the dogs sweets yesterday.'

There are few exceptions to this. One of them is the word hekattar 'children' in the vocabulary list above. The word is a lexicalized plural form, and comes from amalgamation of the words hekaci 'boy' and utar 'people; -s'. It can, however, refer to both girls and boys. The word utar usually refers to living creatures only—people, animals, or kamuy (spiritual beings and deities)—but there are some examples of using it to form a plural of an lifeless object. Utar is a noun with quite low level of independence, meaning that it's not really used without either a noun (eg. kamuy utar 'the deities') or a verb (eg. inne utar 'many people') in front of it. 

Instead of showing plural on the nouns, Ainu does have a set of verbs that have a different form in singular and plural. We haven't leart these yet, but they will be covered in a later lesson.

Adverbs of manner

The last point of this mega-long lesson is how to make adverbs of descriptive verbs. It's easy: you just need to attach no after the verb and that's it; for example moyre 'to be slow/to be late' becomes moyreno 'slowly/late'.

In the first lesson we learned words tanpe 'this' and toanpe 'that'. These words are nouns and can be used as independent words, as we did in the first lesson. Here we use the words tan 'this' and toan 'that' insteand. These two are determiners; they always come before a noun and can't be used alone like tanpe and toanpe. Actually, you have already seen one of these words earlier in this lesson: Remember tanto 'today', tancup 'this month', and tanpa 'this year'? As you might have already guessed, the tan part in those words is the same tan I'm talking about here.

Examples 4

Vocabulary 4

  • tan (DET) — this
  • sinotca (N) — song
  • pirka (VI) — to be good; to be beautiful
  • pirkano (ADV) — well; beautifully
  • sinotcaki (VI) — to sing
  • toan (DET) — that
  • umma (N) — horse
  • tunas (VI) — to be fast
  • tunasno (ADV) — fast; quickly
  • hoyupu (VI) — to run
  • numan (ADV) — yesterday
  • topen (N) — sweets
  • poronno (ADV) — a lot; much; greatly
  • ku- (PM) — the first person singular subject marker, 'I do' 
  • e (VT) — to eat something
  • ponno (ADV) — a little; a small amount
  • e- (PM) — the second person singular subject marker, 'you do' 
  • mokor (VI) — to sleep

Note that poronno 'a lot; much' and ponno 'a little' have a specialized use of expressing amount. The words they come from are poro 'to be big; large' and pon 'to be small; to be little'. Also notice that when the adverbal suffix -no is attached to the word poro, it becomes poronno, not porono.

Phew. That became pretty heavy lesson, not just because of complete new concepts of how a language can work but with vocabulary, too. There is a lot of new vocabulary in the next lesson, too, and also introduction to another concept that doesn't exist in English, that is, the divide of nouns to alienable and inalienable. Go the the fourth lesson to learn more.

 

Created on 2023/2/10, Latest update on 2024/8/25