Ebook: Impersonal Constructions in Ainu

Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, 2009 . - 18 p.The impersonal passive in Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects employs the transitive construction, while the impersonal passive in Central Hokkaido employs the transitive construction for third and first person Undergoers and the intransitive construction for second and indefinite person Undergoers. This fact gives extra support for Shibatani’s idea (1990: 60) that the Ainu passive represents a case of change from a transitive construction to an intransitive construction. It is likely that Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects have retained an older pattern of impersonal and that Central Hokkaido Ainu dialects have been documented exactly at the stage of shift from impersonal passive to genuine passive. Therefore it is hardly surprising that even in Southern Hokkaido Ainu dialects the discourse function of the impersonal passive is not just defocusing Actor – a typical function of impersonals, but also focusing on Undergoer and focusing on the result of action, the latter two are characteristic of the genuine passive. The formation of the impersonal passive in Ainu appears to be sensitive to the topicality hierarchy second person first person third person, i.e. in the Ishikari dialect, the Undergoers which are higher on the topicality hierarchy trigger the construction with more properties of the prototypical passive.