Appositive possession in Ainu and around the Pacific

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Language Typology
• Historical Linguistics

Background:

• Many Pacific languages exhibit multiple alienable possessive classes using appositive nouns or classifiers.
• This contrasts with the common alienable/inalienable distinction marked on the possessum, typically with a single alienable class.
• The Ainu language isolate presents a unique possessive system reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide the first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession.
• To reconstruct the historical Ainu possessive pattern with multiple alienable class constructions.
• To conduct a cross-linguistic survey of appositive-type possessive constructions and situate Ainu within this typology.

Main Methods:

• Detailed analysis of Ainu possessive marking, identifying the possessor as a finite clause argument with a verb as the appositive.
• Reconstruction of the historical Ainu possessive system based on typological evidence.
• Cross-linguistic survey of possessive systems, categorizing them based on argument structure (possessibility) and valence (alienable/inalienable classes).

Main Results:

• Ainu possesses a distinctive system where the possessor is an argument in a finite clause, with a verb functioning as the appositive.
• Historical Ainu likely featured multiple alienable class constructions, a pattern previously undocumented.
• The study categorizes alienability and inalienability into argument structure and valence, refining the classification of possessive systems.

Conclusions:

• Ainu's possessive system, particularly its historical form, offers crucial insights into diverse strategies for encoding possession, especially multiple alienable classes.
• The proposed framework of argument structure and valence provides a more nuanced understanding of cross-linguistic variation in possessive constructions.
• This research expands the understanding of appositive-type possessive systems and their place in linguistic typology.