Negation in Sakhalin Ainu: History and Typology

This paper investigates negation in Sakhalin Ainu by focusing on the morphosyntax, semantics, and historical development of the negative proclitic ham=, which is employed for standard negation (including copula negation) and non-standard negation (including constituent negation, prohibitions, apprehensives, and negation in a number of dependent clause types), and of the constructions that feature it. The author argues in favor of the diachronic development of the Sakhalin Ainu negative ham= from a negative existential verb into a proclitic, which later in the history of the language gained more prefix-like features and further proceeded in its evolution to become a pre-verbal negator through the grammaticalization of a negative copula construction. The functional development of ham= is shaped by the interaction of the Givón Negative Cycle and the Negative Existential Cycle. At the same time, the author discusses how ham= being used to mark focus negation led to 1) the development of an analytic negative construction, from an originally synthetic one, that has come to be used as the sole productive strategy for negation in the later stages of the language’s history, and 2) the development of prohibitive and apprehensive markers from negated non-content words following a typologically rare grammaticalization path. This paper adds to our understanding of negation in Ainuic, a grammar feature that more than others shows great variation within the family, and highlights the relevance of this topic for the investigation of areas of Ainu grammar which remain underdescribed to date, such as clause dependencies and modality.