Ebook: An equivalent of the standard of comparison relativization in Ainu

Hokkaido University, Journal of the Center for Northern Humanities, 2015 8: 43-62 p.Ainu allows to relativize on all the positions on Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) accessibility hierarchy except for the alienable possessor and standard of comparison proper. Ainu is generally famous for its ability of stranding postpositions, which is particularly conspicuous in relativization on adjuncts. I will focus on a newly discovered degree adjunct relativization strategy and propose to treat it as an Ainu equivalent of the standard of comparison relativization, which is used as a conventionalized superlative expression: a=ona [pak-no nispa isam] nispa ne. ‘My father was a rich man with no equals’. lit. ‘My father is (a) rich man [till (whom) (there) is no (such) (a) rich man].’ I will show what structural properties of Ainu facilitate the use of this typologically unusual ‘postposition stranding without resumptive pronoun strategy’ and account for it in a broader context of other relativization types.