5s langs 'n stuff

irakarapte opitta, tanto a=eyaypakasnu ro~

It isn't quite simple to cover even the very basic pronominal clitics present in Ainu. It is deeply interwoven with qualities that may be difficult to understand, changing morpho-syntactic alignments, the 4th person, inclusivity, honorifics, and unique combined forms. Despite this, the rules are consistent and I hope to showcase each here.

To start, the persons, there are 4 persons, which is different to our usual understanding of grammatical person, however, it is not unique to Ainu, and in fact, has its own presence in English.

The first person (I/we)

Singular forms consist of the proclitics; the nominative ku=, or k= before all vowels except for <i> and the accusative en= While the plural (exclusive) forms consist of; the ergative ci=, or c= before all vowels the accusative un= and the intransitive enclitic =as

note 4th person; inclusivity

The second person (you/ye)

Singular form e=, and plural form eci= both of which do not change based on alignment.

note 4th person; honorific

The third person (he/she/they/it)

This form has a blank clitic, it is only an assumed pronoun.

The fourth person (one) or generic person

The most unique of the four, this person while only consisting of a single set of forms contains a much greater number of meanings. To begin with this clitic consists of the forms; ergative a=, accusative i= and intransitive =an It can act as; Fourth person First person plural inclusive Second person honorific Quotative first person as well as a valency decreasing operand, a passiviser in the ergative, and a null object in the accusative, which mirrors (e-) the valency increasing marker.

The combinations;

An important feature of the Ainu language is pluractionality. That being the use of different verbs, or verb forms to denote actions undertaken by 1 or multiple people. Commonly words to do with movement and location observe this feature, for example; arpa - paye (to go) a - rok (to sit) an - oka (to be (stative/locative))

While some words like these have wholly different basic stems, there are other words which use pluractionality with a simple stem-affix relationship, for example; ahun - ahup (to enter) apkas - apkaspa (to walk) nuye - nuypa (to write)

These forms are used in conjunction with singular and plural clitic pronouns. As such, it can also be an indicator of which usage is intended when using the 4th person clitic 'a=', as the plural and singular form of this are equal.

Usage examples;