A Corpus-based Typological Study of Ainu Verbal Categories

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Ainu, a moribund language in Northern Japan. The genetic affiliation of Ainu is unknown. Its importance for the study Northeast Asia's linguistic past and for understanding the diversity of human knowledge and experience may hardly be overestimated. Within this project, I continued buiding up a corpus of an annotated corpus of Ainu audio materials. On its basis I have investigated Ainu verbal categories, namely voices, in a typological perspective. The morphosyntactic wealth of Ainu voices includes reciprocals, reflexives, antipassives, applicatives, causatives, and anticausatives, most of which I have published on within the grant period. Moreover, various voices may combine in many possible ways, which I have illustrated by my Ainu valency database (a part of the ValPal Leipzig database). The project as a whole is aimed at opening the field of Ainu studies to the world and helping people to appreciate linguistic and cultural contribution of the Ainu to human intellectual heritage.