Family: Ainu
Genus: Ainu

Ainu

WALS coordinates: 43° N, 143° E

spoken in Japan

Find examples here.

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:	Ainu
Ruhlen:	Ainu
Routledge:
Other:	Ainu, Hokkaido dialect, Ainu (Hokkaido)
ISO 639-3:	ain (article in Wikipedia)

Features

ID	Feature	Value	Area
1A	Consonant Inventories	Average	Phonology	comment
2A	Vowel Quality Inventories	Average (5-6)	Phonology	comment
3A	Consonant-Vowel Ratio	Moderately low	Phonology	comment
4A	Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives	No voicing constrast	Phonology	comment
5A	Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems	Other	Phonology	comment
6A	Uvular Consonants	None	Phonology	comment
7A	Glottalized Consonants	No glottalized consonants	Phonology	comment
8A	Lateral Consonants	No laterals	Phonology	comment
9A	The Velar Nasal	No velar nasal	Phonology	comment
10A	Vowel Nasalization	Contrast absent	Phonology	comment
11A	Front Rounded Vowels	None	Phonology	comment
12A	Syllable Structure	Moderately complex	Phonology	comment
13A	Tone	Simple tone system	Phonology	comment
18A	Absence of Common Consonants	All present	Phonology	comment
19A	Presence of Uncommon Consonants	None	Phonology	comment
22A	Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb	4-5 categories per word	Morphology	comment
23A	Locus of Marking in the Clause	No marking	Morphology	comment
24A	Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases	Head marking	Morphology	comment
25A	Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology	Inconsistent or other	Morphology	comment
25B	Zero Marking of A and P Arguments	Non-zero marking	Morphology	comment
26A	Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology	Equal prefixing and suffixing	Morphology	comment
27A	Reduplication	Full reduplication only	Morphology	comment
28A	Case Syncretism	No case marking	Morphology	comment
29A	Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking	Not syncretic	Morphology	comment
30A	Number of Genders	None	Nominal Categories	comment
31A	Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems	No gender	Nominal Categories	comment
32A	Systems of Gender Assignment	No gender	Nominal Categories	comment
33A	Coding of Nominal Plurality	Plural suffix	Nominal Categories	comment
34A	Occurrence of Nominal Plurality	All nouns, always optional	Nominal Categories	comment
35A	Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns	Person-number affixes	Nominal Categories	comment
36A	The Associative Plural	Associative same as additive plural	Nominal Categories	comment examples
39A	Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns	Inclusive/exclusive	Nominal Categories	comment examples
40A	Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection	Inclusive/exclusive	Nominal Categories	comment examples
41A	Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives	Two-way contrast	Nominal Categories	comment examples
42A	Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives	Different stem	Nominal Categories	comment examples
43A	Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives	Unrelated	Nominal Categories	comment examples
44A	Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns	No gender distinctions	Nominal Categories	comment
45A	Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns	Binary politeness distinction	Nominal Categories	comment examples
46A	Indefinite Pronouns	Interrogative-based	Nominal Categories	comment
48A	Person Marking on Adpositions	Pronouns only	Nominal Categories	comment
49A	Number of Cases	Exclusively borderline case-marking	Nominal Categories	comment
50A	Asymmetrical Case-Marking	Symmetrical	Nominal Categories	comment
51A	Position of Case Affixes	No case affixes or adpositional clitics	Nominal Categories	comment
52A	Comitatives and Instrumentals	Differentiation	Nominal Categories	comment examples
53A	Ordinal Numerals	None	Nominal Categories	comment
54A	Distributive Numerals	Marked by following word	Nominal Categories	comment
55A	Numeral Classifiers	Optional	Nominal Categories	comment
56A	Conjunctions and Universal Quantifiers	Formally similar, with interrogative	Nominal Categories	comment
57A	Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes	Possessive prefixes	Nominal Categories	comment
58A	Obligatory Possessive Inflection	Absent	Nominal Syntax	comment
58B	Number of Possessive Nouns	None reported	Nominal Syntax	comment
59A	Possessive Classification	No possessive classification	Nominal Syntax	comment
60A	Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses	Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed	Nominal Syntax	comment
63A	Noun Phrase Conjunction	'And' different from 'with'	Nominal Syntax	comment
64A	Nominal and Verbal Conjunction	Differentiation	Nominal Syntax	comment
65A	Perfective/Imperfective Aspect	No grammatical marking	Verbal Categories	comment
66A	The Past Tense	No past tense	Verbal Categories	comment
67A	The Future Tense	No inflectional future	Verbal Categories	comment
68A	The Perfect	No perfect	Verbal Categories	comment
69A	Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes	Tense-aspect suffixes	Verbal Categories	comment
70A	The Morphological Imperative	Second person number-neutral	Verbal Categories	comment
71A	The Prohibitive	Normal imperative + special negative	Verbal Categories	comment
72A	Imperative-Hortative Systems	Neither type of system	Verbal Categories	comment
73A	The Optative	Inflectional optative absent	Verbal Categories	comment
74A	Situational Possibility	Verbal constructions	Verbal Categories	comment
75A	Epistemic Possibility	Other	Verbal Categories	comment
76A	Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking	Overlap for either possibility or necessity	Verbal Categories	comment examples
77A	Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality	Direct and indirect	Verbal Categories	comment
78A	Coding of Evidentiality	Verbal affix or clitic	Verbal Categories	comment
79A	Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect	None	Verbal Categories	comment
79B	Suppletion in Imperatives and Hortatives	None (= no suppletive imperatives reported in the reference material)	Verbal Categories	comment
80A	Verbal Number and Suppletion	Singular-plural pairs, suppletion	Verbal Categories	comment examples
81A	Order of Subject, Object and Verb	SOV	Word Order	comment
82A	Order of Subject and Verb	SV	Word Order	comment
83A	Order of Object and Verb	OV	Word Order	comment
85A	Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase	Postpositions	Word Order	comment
86A	Order of Genitive and Noun	Genitive-Noun	Word Order	comment
87A	Order of Adjective and Noun	Adjective-Noun	Word Order	comment
88A	Order of Demonstrative and Noun	Demonstrative-Noun	Word Order	comment
89A	Order of Numeral and Noun	Numeral-Noun	Word Order	comment
90A	Order of Relative Clause and Noun	Relative clause-Noun	Word Order	comment
90B	Prenominal relative clauses	Relative clause-Noun (RelN) dominant	Word Order	comment
92A	Position of Polar Question Particles	Final	Word Order	comment
93A	Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions	Not initial interrogative phrase	Word Order	comment
94A	Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause	Final subordinator word	Word Order	comment
95A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase	OV and Postpositions	Word Order	comment
96A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun	OV and RelN	Word Order	comment
97A	Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun	OV and AdjN	Word Order	comment
98A	Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases	Neutral	Simple Clauses	comment examples
99A	Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns	Neutral	Simple Clauses	comment examples
100A	Alignment of Verbal Person Marking	Split	Simple Clauses	comment
101A	Expression of Pronominal Subjects	Subject affixes on verb	Simple Clauses	comment
102A	Verbal Person Marking	Both the A and P arguments	Simple Clauses	comment
103A	Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking	Zero in all 3rd person forms	Simple Clauses	comment
104A	Order of Person Markers on the Verb	A precedes P	Simple Clauses	comment
105A	Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'	Secondary-object construction	Simple Clauses	comment
106A	Reciprocal Constructions	Distinct from reflexive	Simple Clauses	comment examples
107A	Passive Constructions	Present	Simple Clauses	comment
108A	Antipassive Constructions	No antipassive	Simple Clauses	comment
108B	Productivity of the Antipassive Construction	no antipassive	Simple Clauses	comment
109A	Applicative Constructions	Benefactive and other; both bases	Simple Clauses	comment
109B	Other Roles of Applied Objects	Instrument and locative	Simple Clauses	comment
111A	Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions	Morphological but no compound	Simple Clauses	comment
112A	Negative Morphemes	Negative particle	Simple Clauses	comment
113A	Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation	Symmetric	Simple Clauses	comment
114A	Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation	Non-assignable	Simple Clauses	comment
115A	Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation	Predicate negation also present	Simple Clauses	comment
116A	Polar Questions	Question particle	Simple Clauses	comment
117A	Predicative Possession	'Have'	Simple Clauses	comment
118A	Predicative Adjectives	Verbal encoding	Simple Clauses	comment
119A	Nominal and Locational Predication	Different	Simple Clauses	comment
120A	Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals	Impossible	Simple Clauses	comment
124A	'Want' Complement Subjects	Subject is left implicit	Complex Sentences	comment
125A	Purpose Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
126A	'When' Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
127A	Reason Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
128A	Utterance Complement Clauses	Balanced	Complex Sentences	comment
129A	Hand and Arm	Identical	Lexicon	comment examples
131A	Numeral Bases	Pure vigesimal	Lexicon	comment examples
136A	M-T Pronouns	No M-T pronouns	Lexicon	comment
136B	M in First Person Singular	No m in first person singular	Lexicon	comment
137A	N-M Pronouns	No N-M pronouns	Lexicon	comment
137B	M in Second Person Singular	No m in second person singular	Lexicon	comment
143A	Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb	NegV	Word Order	comment
143E	Preverbal Negative Morphemes	NegV	Word Order	comment
143F	Postverbal Negative Morphemes	None	Word Order	comment
143G	Minor morphological means of signaling negation	None	Word Order	comment
144A	Position of Negative Word With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb	SONegV	Word Order	comment
144B	Position of negative words relative to beginning and end of clause and with respect to adjacency to verb	Immed preverbal	Word Order	comment
144L	The Position of Negative Morphemes in SOV Languages	SONegV	Word Order	comment
144P	NegSOV Order	No NegSOV	Word Order	comment
144Q	SNegOV Order	No SNegOV	Word Order	comment
144R	SONegV Order	Word&NoDoubleNeg	Word Order	comment
144S	SOVNeg Order	NoSOVNeg	Word Order	comment