Wiktionary talk:About Ainu

RFD discussion: January 2018–April 2019

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Wiktionary:About Ainu

Wiktionary:Ainu Project

Wiktionary:Ainu Project/grammar

About pages have been deleted that had more text, and of the presented three pages here the former two have absolutely no content and the third abuses Wiktionary as a data warehouse for work BenjaminBarrett12 (talk • contribs) had to do on his own disk, while for what he has left I see no use. We can of course make great translation appendices for grammar terms but this is very far from it, and I do not know what purpose it would serve were it completed that could justify its presence. Palaestrator verborum ^{sis loquier 🗣} 00:04, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Delete. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 00:59, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Palaestrator verborum: Don't forget that you have to tag the pages first with {{rfd}}, and only from there should you create a section here (by using the + sign of that template). --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 01:24, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam Yes, I consider using the template on the pages, but the links on the templates were incorrect, because I collect all in one title, for they are supposed to be covered jointly, or is such never the case? So maybe I am supposed to use L3 for all? Then also, sometimes nobody cares and we have these templates for two years on the pages which makes Wiktionary look bad. By itself, the use of the template is minute. Sometimes it prevents people from making too many vain contributions to a thing, but this won’t happen here. Palaestrator verborum ^{sis loquier 🗣} 10:57, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Palaestrator verborum: Given how the template linking works, I don't think it's possible to cover several rfd in a single header, so yes, you have to create L3 headers.

Btw, I appreciate your efforts to clean up other pages (Wiktionary:About..., etc.) and streamlining it all. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 13:14, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Deleted —Rua (mew) 17:33, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

About scripts

Ainu languages has two main writing systems used now. Katakana is especially used of educational purpose for Japanese people and Latin is often used in academic context. It's really hard to decide which script to use mainly. Currently English Wiktionary has most of its pages in Katakana as entry name, but Japanese Wiktionary uses Latin mainly.

Some discussions in Japanese can be seen here (アイヌ語版Wikipediaに関する議論) -- Mkpoli (talk) 07:54, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

Following on @Mkpoli's comment above, I propose that we locate the lemma (i.e. main) entries at the Latin alphabet spellings, and only have katakana entries as soft-redirects. We could leverage some of the infrastructure currently in place for Japanese entries, such as {{ja-see}}. As an example of that setup, have a look at Japanese さくら, a soft-redirect to 桜#Japanese. For Ainu entries, we could create and use {{ain-see}} used on the Ainu クル page to redirect readers to the main entry at kuru#Ainu.

@Alves9, does this fit with your description on the About page, where you wrote, "prioritising Latin entries when possible"?

Also pinging @Suzukaze-c, YukaSylvie, Cnilep, and inviting anyone else editing Ainu entries. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:08, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

When a word's Katakana spelling is well attested (such as toponyms or well-known Ainu words) it would be wise to create a separate Katakana entry, if only just for the searcher's convenience. There are also potential quotation sources where only the kana spelling is present, such as pre-war yukar recorded by the Japanese. However, as mentioned by user Mkpoli, nowadays the kana system is mostly only used in Japanese-language materials to teach native Japanese learners how to start to read in Ainu. An expected result, as it proves to be an incredibly cumbersome spelling system to use in a language that has things like closed syllables and semi-vowels, neither of which Japanese has. All in all, Latin should be used when possible, but still we shouldn't close the doors to the possibility of still having non-redirect Katakana entries.

As for translation pages, I believe they should indeed be done exclusively in Latin. Adding translations in both Katakana and Latin would just be double the work for no gain. Alves9 (talk) 20:19, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Alves9. --YukaSylvie (talk) 23:21, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you both!

I am fully supportive of having katakana entries. I view this as vital for usability -- we don't know which spelling a user might look up first, katakana or alphabetical, so I think it's important that users are able to find terms via either route.

I am somewhat concerned about the idea that the lemma form for some entries would live at the alphabetical spelling, and for others at the katakana spelling. How would editors determine which spelling would be the main address for a given word, when creating and maintaining entries? I imagine that such an inconsistency might present problems for readers as well.

Can we come up with clear criteria for how to make this determination? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:32, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

First, thanks everyone for concerning about this issue.

To speak of extremes, even if there is no Katakana entries at all, although not as convenient, user can still search for Katakana and most likely is able to find what they want, as long as we use auto-conversion templates in every entry (it will be as easy as {{ain-kana}}).

I would like to have all Katakana entries redirect (if no need for other languages, e.g. Japanese Katakana entries), or only link to corresponding entries in Latin without any real content, so that it is easier to maintain.

As for quotation, it is not very difficult to create a template and module that auto-converts sentences and list them both, based on what we have in Japanese Wiktionary (or here I'm not very sure) that is able to convert on word-level. However, I doubt if it is really necessary. -- Mkpoli (talk) 09:33, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Mkpoli, I am opposed to using hard-redirects: these can be very confusing and frustrating to the user, who may not understand why they land on a different page from the one they expected. If we use an Ainu version of {{ja-see}} to create soft-redirect entries instead, users are presented with a summary of the main entry that includes the POS labels and definitions -- often the main content that readers want -- and also a clear indication that they should click through to the main entry for further detail if they want it. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:10, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr Agreed. -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the direction should towards to that it is not necessary, but allowed, while not actively encouraging, for Ainu entries in Katakana and Cyrillic. -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Let me preface this by saying that I am fairly ignorant of contemporary Ainu, and know it mainly through older texts, especially Batchelor.

For what it's worth, I like the idea of using something similar to {{ja-see}}, which gives partial transclusion of the content that is at the main lemma page. I would favor consistency (that is, putting all main lemmas at their Latin spelling, for instance) because it tends to make life easier for dictionary users as well as Wiktionary editors. I do take Alves9's point that some texts are attested in Katakana rather than Latin, and that some words are common in Katakana, but I long for consistency nonetheless. Note that some {{ja-see}} pages also include {{ja-kanjitab}} (e.g. 相合い傘); maybe something parallel to that (maybe something like {{seemoreCites}}?) could make Katakana usage examples appear on both pages? Cnilep (talk) 01:40, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Also only to be noticed, there is some entry that even is in Cyrillic, such as айну#Ainu and хурэ#Ainu. Since Kuril and Sakhalin Ainu varieties has died very early, it is certainly not actively used, but there are some old materials especially published in Russia that use Cyrillic. -- Mkpoli (talk) 10:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Comments about the three scripts can be found here: Category talk:Ainu language -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:34, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

One more addition, currently {{ain-verb}} and {{ain-noun}} links to Katakana entries even if they are not created by default, which may cause a mass production of red links, we should change the behavior to either link only when exists or not link at all. -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Another legacy discussion here: Talk:コッ, which will possibly be irrelevant soon due to our move. -- Mkpoli (talk) 05:32, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Stative verbs

I'd like to take the opportunity to bring up the stative verb issue. As we all know, Ainu has somewhat unconventional grammar where the Indo-European concept of adjectives is absent, with stative verbs realising their function instead. Fortunately, this also happens to be the case with Chinese grammar, and so we at least have somewhere to reference to when dealing with this issue. Coincidentally, Chinese editors' current policy is to give stative verbs with functions identical to adjectives the "adjective" header, presumably for convenience. However, when I proposed a similar arrangement for Ainu, I was met with opposition, being warned that Ainu needs to have its own considerations. Thus, there are two options:

• Keep stative verbs on the "verb" header, which may be possibly confusing to readers not familiar with Ainu grammar (see Mkpoli's recently added entry for the Ainu equivalent of the adjective "white")
• Start using the "adjective" header for stative verbs that function identically to adjectives, which is much more convenient but may sacrifice some grammatical accuracy

Pinging @Eirikr, YukaSylvie, Cnilep, Mkpoli to discuss the issue. Alves9 (talk) 13:39, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

@Alves9: As far as I know, the situation here is a little different from Chinese grammar. In established studies of Chinese, adjectives are widely approved PoS, and it's possible to distinguish adjectives and verbs to some extent. For example, I have a textbook on Chinese grammar: 陆俭明 (2013) “现代汉语语法研究教程” 第四版 (4th Edition), in which it states that although it is a difficult problem, they have a consensus on it. The book lists quite a lot of divisions of PoS by researchers from old time to modern time, and almost all of them has Adjectives. It shows that to distinguish verbs and adjectives, one can see if it can be used with 很～, with objects, in Verb-Complement structure (打破了 “Hit so that it breaks” Verb-Complement-Particle), etc.

Another similar language is Korean, where the conjugations of verbs and adjectives are almost the same, only with a little difference such as ~ㄴ다 and imperative forms.

• 행복하다→행복한다 (happy as a verb)
• 빠르다→*빠른다 (fast as an adjective) (ref: [1])

In Ainu language and the researches on it, as stated by Анна Бугаева (アンナ・ブガエワ, translated by 児島康宏、長崎郁) in 北海道南部のアイヌ語: 「形態的に区別されるような形容詞のクラスは存在しない。= There is no class of adjectives that are morphologically distinguished.」(早稲田大学高等研究所紀要), adjectives are not recognized in Ainu at all.

In my opinion, I don't think it is good to make the distinguish by us, because it may be unclear and without standards. We should describe it rather than prescribe it. Although one can be confused by how it ends up like no adjective at first, it will be quite clear after they are familiar with the language. What we should do is to describe the truth and let readers decide how they accept it. So I'm against using “adjective” headers, and I think we should keep using “verb” headers.　-- Mkpoli (talk) 16:07, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

In addition, there is a table describing the transitions of PoS division in researching from 1931~1999 in this paper: 井筒 勝信 (2006) “アイヌ語の品詞分類再考：いわゆる人称代名詞をめぐって” ( Ainu Parts of Speech Revisited: with Special Reference to So-called Personal Pronouns) [2]. It shows that at first there is the division of adjectives but it is soon merged into verbs by researchers. -- Mkpoli (talk) 16:13, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Interesting argument. However, the claim that adjectives are not recognised "at all" in Ainu is demonstrably false. According to Refsing (1986):

• Both Kindaichi and Chiri make a distinction between verbs and adjectives, although they both note that such a distinction is not required from a functional point of view. Kindaichi says that [Ainu] adjectives (...) are similar to the category of adjectives in Japanese. [Likewise], Chiri says [that] "The difference between verbs and adjectives in Ainu is very slight, semantically the former express acts, while the latter express properties, and functionally the latter have no imperative form -- that is all. There is no morphological difference whatsoever.

Indeed, there is no concrete morphological difference, and there is no formal "class of adjectives" in Ainu, but to say that verbs and adjectives are not distinguished is incorrect.

If one were to, however, nonetheless insist that only the "verb" header should be used for these near-adjectives, I can see how some problems could arise from a dictionary's practical standpoint. Would the entry for tan, a demonstrative, be thus renamed from "this" to "to be this(?)"? It seems to be an awful lot of headache for no gain.

Besides, it is quite naive to think that the average reader will ever come to study the Ainu language enough to understand this strange classification. And even if they do, wouldn't be easier to have those functionally identical stative verbs already under the "adjective" header? This argument seems to be based more on grammatical pedantry than any concern for actual practicality. Once again, I will repeat that my concern is not whether Ainu actually has a formal class of "adjectives" as in Indo-European languages, I am simply asking for one of those concessions that are necessary when doing comparative studies on any language. I sincerely do not think keeping these words under the "verb" header will be of any profit. Alves9 (talk) 22:31, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, hmm, interesting discussion.

I find myself leaning more towards Alves9's point of view -- our readership can only safely be assumed to be familiar with English, and not necessarily with the finer points of academic grammarians. Given that, functionally and morphologically, Ainu adjectives do not seem to inflect all that much (as, indeed, Ainu words in general don't -- it seems to be a very analytic language), there is little value in calling them "verbs". The primary distinction appears to be the question of whether they can be used predicatively, which at least some grammarians appear to use as a marker of "verb-ness". I don't think this is a distinction that will mean anything useful to our readers.

By way of comparison, Japanese -i adjectives function as a kind of stative verb, complete with a past tense. However, I have only very seldom encountered materials that class these words as "verbs", outside of obscure and (in my opinion) overly pedantic academic contexts.

Instead of using ===Verb=== for these terms, I think we should use the ===Adjective=== header for Ainu terms that describe the properties of a thing, and explain the finer points of the grammatical details on the Wiktionary:About Ainu page. Calling them "verbs" is much more likely to confuse our audience, and indeed it might require inelegant contortions like adding "to be ..." in all the definition lines. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that Japanese adjectives are very like a verb, but there is a big distinction in conjugation and forms both morphologically and syntactically, all the way from Old Japanese to Modern Japanese. Japanese adjectives can also match Europeans' well, and on the other direction with adjectival nouns, too. Japanese adjectives are also established well in researches just as in Chinese, or even better. It is no way similar to Ainu.

It is not that because they are similar to verbs, so that we should make them verbs, rather, those verbs have no morphological distinction in them and those verbs are used in a similar manner as well. Those semantically adjectival verbs, and other verbs can be used in modifier position and predicate position in the same manner. -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:02, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Surely, that statement of mine was too extreme, so I kind of corrected by linking to a table which shows they are only distinguished originally. But it is still the fact that modern researchers agree that there are no adjectives. Even though Kindaichi and Chiri at that time provides distinction by imperatives, I doubt that those are more of a semantical reason and as long as they have no morphological distinction, we cannot distinguish them out.

Yes, adding "to be" is quite tedious, but we could omit it either way, considering its usage of modifier.

Is it a really necessity to make it adjectives in comparative studies? I don't think so. If someone wants to compare adjectives in languages, the fact that there is no such thing as adjectives, is itself more important.

I don't think it's appropriate to call following what researches have consensus “grammatical pedantry”. Also, it is very western-centric to ignore the difference in a specific language.

As for the word tan, this is a bad example because it is nether verb, nor adjective, it is a adnominal word and used directly before a noun to modify it. Adnominal is a translation for Japanese "連体詞 (connect-substantive-word)", as stated in Анна Бугаева (2014) “北海道南部のアイヌ語”:

Also, it seems like those adnominals, or determiners cannot be used in predicate position.

What I think differently is that to have them under “verb” or “adjective”, both have their advantages and disadvantages. Let's try to analyze what we will get and what we will lose.

Use as header	As an editor		As a reader
	Pros	Cons	Pros	Cons
“Verb”	based on existing researches, no need for original research	needs to explain the difference between Ainu and other languages	can notice how Ainu is different immediately	confusion at first
“Adjective”	can define a word in an adjective manner (no “to be”s)	needs to determine whether a word is “adjective” or “verb”, and to explain the difference between grammar instruction and dictionary	easier to understand at first (intuitive)	confusion at long run

I still doubt should we make the distinction only by ourselves, just because of similarity in meanings and translations to other languages. -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:02, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Comments about adjectives can be found here: Category_talk:Ainu_adjectives, where @Siljami is also kind of against using adjectives. -- Mkpoli (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

If all Ainu terms that describe qualities of state, such as pirka, also all have a "become [QUALITY]" (describing not just a state, but more specifically a change in state), then these words all function as both adjectives -- which by definition describe qualities of state -- and as intransitive "to become" verbs. I do not think we can explain these usefully to an English-reading audience by calling both senses either "adjective" or "verb". Given the absence of imperatives for Ainu "adjectives", it seems a morphological distinction exists. In addition, if I have not misunderstood, it appears that adverbs using the -no suffix are created only from these stative Ainu "adjectives". Even if there were no morphological distinction between Ainu "adjectives" and Ainu "verbs", there is a functional distinction between these senses that would be obscured.

I must emphasize that this Wiktionary is targeting a non-academic English-language readership. We must consider that most of our audience would fall into the "short-term reader" category with regard to the table above.

For editors, Wiktionary is a dictionary, not a grammar book. While we have some grammar content, that is (or at least, should be) kept to the respective Wiktionary:About ... pages. We have no obligation "to explain the difference between grammar instruction and dictionary [entries]" in depth, and indeed we mostly refer readers to the respective Wikipedia pages for any detailed explanation that goes beyond the specifics of how we annotate entries here.

With regard to definitions, general practice here in any language's entries is to give definitions in a way that conforms to the POS header. Thus, any ===Verb=== definition lines must be worded as verbal phrases. Defining a verb as an adjective is frowned upon, and vice versa. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your explanation. We should definitely explain those facts and our considerations on it in Wiktionary:About Ainu, but another thing that I'm concerning about is that as a reader myself, I had never been to those Wiktionary:About <lang> pages, and from the contents, it seems like that it is more of a guide on editing. Maybe we can use some templates to explain it in the entries as a note? -- Mkpoli (talk) 05:02, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@Mkpoli, may I ask you what you think about using the "adjective" header for words that can semantically function as Ainu counterparts of English adjectives, while still using the "verb" header to describe their predicative use? For example, the word pirika could have an adjective and a verb header, one that says "good" and another one that says "to be good", or "to become good". That way no information is left out and Wiktionary still realises its function of being a 1:1 dictionary. That, to be honest, was what I was planning to do the entire time, but it seems like I got carried away in the heat of the "adjective vs verb" discussion and forgot to make it clear. Indeed, it doesn't have to be "either or". What I'm arguing for is the use of the "adjective" header itself, which I think is harmless. Alves9 (talk) 00:48, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@Alves9 Although I still feel something not quite right, I think if we do them both, then it will not be unacceptable for me. Also, maybe we could automate this? May not be good to use templates because it's difficult to add extra information. -- Mkpoli (talk) 05:02, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

For me, it feels right now that there are two different things discussed here: 1) does Ainu have adjectives or not, 2) what is the best way to categorise words in the point of view of an average monolingual English speaking Wiktionary user.
What comes to the first point, Ainu researchers and experts are at this point of time quite unanimous about Ainu not having adjectives. As far as I am aware, none of the discussants here are acknowledged Ainu experts, so we are not the best people to make any judgements on that point and we should rather turn to the latest research instead (which says Ainu does not have adjectives). Also, making comparisons to Japanese or any other language is not very fruitful because Ainu verbs are very different from the Japanese so-called i-adjectives, which originally got their tense inflection by assimilating with a succeeding verb (eg. 赤かった ＜ 赤く＋あった). None of the Ainu verbs, on the other hand, have any inflection at all.
The basic function of the so-called adjectives in Ainu is exactly the same as any intransitive verb: you can use them as predicates and modifiers as well as they are. (Ainu verbs do not have tenses so the meaning is understood in the context.)

• cikappo retar ‘the bird is/was white/becomes white’
• cikappo hopuni ‘the bird flies/flew/will fly’
• retar cikappo ‘a/the white bird’ (‘a/the bird that is/was/becomes white)
• hopuni cikappo ‘a/the flying bird’ (a/the bird that flies/flew/will fly)

Of course there are some differences based for example on the lexical aspect of the verbs, which in turn has an effect on how the verb can be used. For example, Ainu has two progressive tenses, kor an/oka and wa an/oka. The former indicates that the action is ongoing (very much like English progressive), and the latter indicates that there has been a change and this is the result of the action/change (cf. Japanese 結婚している, does not mean that ‘someone is getting married right now’, but rather that ‘someone is married’). Some verbs can be used in kor an/oka structure only, some verbs with wa an/oka structure only, and some with both. Well, you could argue that all the verbs that are used with kor an/oka are verbs (eg. ku-ipe kor ku-an ‘I am having a meal’, ek kor an ‘s/he is going’) as can be understood with English as a baseline, and the verbs used with wa an/oka are adjectives (eg. e-teyne wa e-an ‘you are wet’, iwanke wa an ‘s/he is healthy’). But then, there are verbs like siknu ‘to live’, ray ‘to die’, a/rok ‘to sit’ that are not used with kor an/oka but wa an/oka. Are they adjectives then? Furthermore, there are some verbs that can appear in both of the constructions, for instance eramuan ‘to understand, to know’, nukar ‘to see, to look at’, nu ‘to hear, to listen’. How should we categorise these?
For the usage of no, Tamura (1996) gives some examples how it can be used with verbs: ci ‘to ripen, to mature’ – cino ‘sufficiently ripen’, imi ‘to wear clothes’ – imino ‘wearing nice clothes’. however, this seems to be somewhat different usage than when used with ‘stative verbs’. What comes to the imperative form, there actually shouldn’t be any morphological restriction to use the ‘stative verbs’ as imperatives, but rather semantic. How often do you command others to ‘become black!’ or ‘be big!’? Not very often, indeed.
As for the second point, I personally feel forcing grammatical categories of one language to another is a very peculiar way of thinking, by which I mean here that because English has adjectives, Ainu must have adjectives, too, and the decision of the categorization is based on the English translation of those words. This seems to be a question of grammatical functionality vs. (translated) meaning.
I do not personally see any problem with adding ‘be’ in front of each ‘stative verb’ entry if that is necessary by the Wiktionary rules. There are already examples of this, eg. Japanese 優れる, 劣る that are verbs in Japanese point of view, but have a meaning of adjective in English point of view. They are categorised as Verbs (as they should) but have English translations of ‘be ADJ’ (as they should).
Also, I wouldn’t like to underestimate the average reader’s ability to understand that not all languages are the same as English. My guess is that most of the users that actually go especially to see any Ainu entry are actually interested in the language, they just do not randomly pop in. To be honest, if the reader knows English only, I believe the confusion cannot be avoided anyway. Let’s say we have the word retar ‘white’, that in the current system should be categorised as an adjective. So, the average user goes to the entry, and sees ‘retar, adjective, white’. But then, there is an example sentence, such as I just gave above, and it says cikappo retar and has ‘the bird is white’ as English translation. At this point, the average reader probably thinks that there is a mistake, because the ‘be’ verb is missing in the Ainu sentence, they only see the Ainu words ‘bird white’. On the other hand, if the word is categorised as ‘retar, verb, be white’ and there is the same example sentence provided, the reader (probably) understands that the word retar has the meaning of ‘to be’ incorporated and that is why there is no separate ‘to be’ in the Ainu sentence. In my books, the latter confusion is more acceptable and that is why I think the Ainu words should be classified from Ainu point of view, that is, no adjectives but verbs only.

Siljami (talk) 07:58, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Whether Ainu has adjectives or not was probably never an element in the discussion, which is the reason why there's no section for adjectives in the About page. But your argument has reason; there are better ways to depict the relation between Ainu stative verbs and English adjectives than creating a different header. Regardless, on the argument about Japanese i-adjectives: clearly their relationship with Ainu stative verbs is not one-to-one, but their circumstances are quite similar nonetheless. The reason why Japanese i-adjectives are said to be stative verbs is because of their peculiar usage. Even if in modern Japanese, as you have mentioned, Japanese i-adjectives are often modified by using their adverbial form along with the verb ある, which would certainly explain away their similarity to verbs in the absence of any other conditions, they also have other characteristically verb-like usage, especially in the classical language. For example, the classic form of the verb you used the example, 赤い, would be 赤し. Just like verbs, it has a specific attributive form, 赤き (which would be strange if it were really a pure adjective, as, as indicated by the nomenclature, they are inherently made to be attributed to nouns). To say "the apple is red", you would say 林檎赤し (lexically APPLE RED), with no copula, as it would be ungrammatical. However, Japanese is not a zero-copula language; so the lack of a copula, if we were take this as a pure example of an adjective, would make it seem, as you have mentioned, like there is a "mistake" somewhere. Therefore, we can only assume that all i-adjectives are, in essence, stative verbs. This is almost the same situation that Ainu stative verbs are in, except for certain differences in grammar (Ainu stative verbs can be used for both the state of being and becoming, while i-adjectives require the construction ～くなる for changes in state.) The label of "adjective", in this case, is mostly a question of convenience, which is somewhat aided by the fact that Japanese i-adjectives have a different ending from other verbs, which facilitates such a distinction. Whether this is a good example to follow or not, I am not sure, but surely it proves that there is a precedent to the question of labeling stative verbs as adjectives or not. Alves9 (talk) 16:36, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Automated Pronunciation and Transliteration

I upgraded and migrated some of the templates and lua modules so that now we can fully automate the process of phonetic transcription and orthographical transliteration. Here is an example: [3] Although we definitely could modify {{ain-verb}}, {{ain-noun}}, etc. to make the syntax simpler.-- Mkpoli (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Using this now. Very useful, saves a lot of time from not having to alternate keyboards. Alves9 (talk) 11:24, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Adnominals vs. Determiners

The term “adnominal” is quite unclear. Adnominals in Ainu should mean adnominal#Etymology_2, which is still not very accurate. I think we should use “Determiners” instead. Some materials and comments on this can be found here.-- Mkpoli (talk) 14:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

About Vr(V)

For word with the syllable structure Vr, such as pirka / -kur. In very old materials, they were written as pirika and kuru, but researches shows that those vowels after "r" is not phonemic, rather phonetic. So what I propose, is to use the form without those vowels as lemma, and only note them if necessary. -- Mkpoli (talk) 05:22, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I was looking into that myself earlier today, actually.  :)

• Batchelor's dictionary seems to include forms mainly with the following vowel. Consider his entries for pirika (bottom of second column on left-hand page) and kara (top of first column on right-hand page), for instance.
• Meanwhile, modern materials for both the Chitose and Bihoro dialects render these terms as pirka (page 96 for Chitose, page 95 for Bihoro) and kar instead (page 91 in both PDFs).
• Although extinct, materials for Sakhalin Ainu include a wordlist that includes pirika and kara.

The introductory text has one instance of pirika and none of pirka, and only kara, no instances of kar.

The beginning text has both pirika and pirka, and mainly kara with one instance of kar in sentence-final position.

The intermediate text seems to have roughly even numbers of pirika vs. pirka, and only kara, no instances of kar.

My impression is that the language has shifted somewhat in the 100+ years since Batchelor's work, resulting in the elision of unstressed vowels in certain positions. Sakhalin Ainu seems to have exhibited this trend less than the two Hokkaido dialects in Chitose and Bihoro.

In light of these findings, I'd suggest that we indeed use the elided form as the lemma, and (where attested) use the vowel-included form for an "alternative form" entry, indicating which dialect(s) use that form. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 09:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

What my impression on this, mostly from Japanese researches, is that there is no shift on pronunciation from pirika to pirka, rather early writings didn't realize the fact that they're not phonemic. And I remembered from a overview on Ainu history, one of w:Yukie Chiri's (author of Ainu Shinyōshū) achievement on Ainu linguistic is that she corrected what w:Kyōsuke Kindaichi thought about this issue, and changed the spelling of pirika to pirka.

Instead, the change is from pirka to pirika, as a copy of the nuclear vowel has been made, potentially because of the influence from Japanese language (which has almost no closed syllables).

My impression can be supported by this statement from Анна Бугаева (2014) “北海道南部のアイヌ語”:

-- Mkpoli (talk) 10:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to weigh in a bit. From what I've seen, vowel deletion seems to be mainly a Saru phenomenon, not being nearly as present in other dialects. The reason why Bachelor's material prioritises forms like pirika over pirka is not necessarily because there was a shift in the Ainu language (which would be hard to be attest in the first place, as the Saru dialect seems to have overshadowed all the other Ainu dialects), but because most of his studies were done in the Sapporo area, where they mainly spoke local dialects, and not Saru. This is also part of the reason why he puts such an emphasis on voicing of consonants, which barely occurs in Saru. Thus, the modern preference of pirka over pirika can be seen simply as Saru dialect bias.

As for the other claim that the reason why certain words have optional vowels between consonants is because of Japanese influence, it is hard to prove. If that were the case, not just words like pirika, but also other words like cikap and nispa should be represented with an intrusive vowel. But it seems like this is just a very common phenomenon, which also coincidentally happens in Japanese: of deletion of vowels between consonants, and also before other vowels, in casual speech. At least, it didn't seem to startle Mr. Batchelor, which briefly mentioned it in his grammar. Another good thing to mention is that Batchelor did his studies in an era where Ainu had very little contact with the Japanese language; he was often the one teaching the Ainu Japanese. It's very unlikely for his subjects to have had a Japanese accent.

Now, I wouldn't be opposed to adding those forms if it were proven that it isn't simply Saru innovation, or a peculiarity of rapid speech. My thought is that adding them without deeper consideration could lead to some loss in etymological value. If we were to add those, we would also likely have to consider adding things like kani for kuani, which, as far as I see it, is unmistakably a Saru quirk. Alves9 (talk) 14:22, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

• @Mkpoli, I agree with Alves9 here. The existence of the post-"r" vowels in Sakhalin materials is another big indicator -- Sakhalin is that much further away from the influence of Japanese language and culture, and thus much less likely to exhibit any vowel-adding caused by contact with Japanese phonetics.

@Alves9, Chitose is almost equidistant between Sapporo and Saru. Would Chitose dialect reflect Saru more than Sapporo? I also note that Bihoro is quite far from Saru, yet there too we see the same terms missing the vowels after "r". Would Bihoro be influenced by Saru speech patterns? My knowledge of Ainu history is quite limited, so I have trouble evaluating what I'm seeing here: parallel patterns, or directly influenced patterns. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:01, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

For most of recordable Ainu history, the Ainu population has been mostly concentrated around the Saru River. That doesn't mean necessarily that the Chitose and Bihoro dialects were influenced by it, but it seems rather likely.

According to Batchelor (page 62 on the grammar), this is how the migration of Ainu took place: Sakhalin → Tokachi → Saru River → Mount Usu/Ishikari River. This likely reflects more recent history, as there is no mention of a southern migration from Honshu, which has some historical basis. Does this mean that the Sakhalin dialect is the most conservative known form of the Ainu language? I'm not sure. But certainly this does to a certain extent prove that Saru may have some influence on the other Southern Dialects, including on some of their use of contractions, and that the Sakhalin dialect, which does not use those contractions, likely preceded it.

Unfortunately, I haven't ever been able to have a look at the eastern Tokachi dialect. It likely died out before ever being studied in length. But, from Batchelor's description (also page 62), it seems like it indeed did not have the habit of deleting vowels. Once again, this is unlikely to be due to Japanese influence, as Tokachi was spoken on the isolated northern part of Hokkaido. In my opinion, this all seems like an innovation, as both Tokachi and Sakhalin (unless influenced by some other Paleo-Siberian language) are very unlikely to have reinserted those vowels after having taken them out.

Now, let me go back to the etymological question for a minute. As I said before, if we take all interconsonantal vowels as non-phonemic, it could lead to some easy misunderstandings. I thought of a particular hilarious example: the basic word iyayraykere (“thank you”) could be interpreted to mean "I was forced to kill myself" if taken at face value (i (“impersonal prefix”) +‎ yayrayke (“to suicide”) +‎ re (“caus. suf.”)). However, once we understand that it derives from the simple deletion of an "i" from the full word iyayiraykere (i (“imp. pref.”) +‎ yayirayke (“to thank”) +‎ re (“caus. suf.”)), it stops being a line that could be spoken by a ghost in a horror novel and starts being an expression of gratitude, thus: "I am compelled to thank (you)". Alves9 (talk) 19:06, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

About -p(e) and -kur

-p(e) and -kur, meaning “thing (man)” and “man” respectively, is a suffix, or bound morpheme that is able turn a verb or a determiner or any other adnominals into a noun. For example tan-pe means “that (thing)” and tan-kur means “that man”, where tan means “that”. Both of those words cannot use alone without any adnominals.

In current ainu writing, -p(e) is often written without space like tanpe or sinep, and those forms are treated as the substantive form of a word. On the other hand, kur is often written as tan kur. The problem is, it is with no doubt we can have -p and -pe as entries, but what should we use, kur or -kur?

There are also other bound nouns like utar (“people”), uske(he) (“place; time”), hike (“side, direction”), and (h)i (“place; time”). -- Mkpoli (talk) 10:53, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

That's simple. If it is idiomatic, add it. If it isn't, don't add it. I don't think the space really makes a difference. "Tanpe" is the Ainu equivalent of "this (noun)", "tan kuru" is the Ainu equivalent of "this person". One is idiomatic, the other is sum of parts. Alves9 (talk) 14:28, 22 October 2020 (UTC)