Semantic function of the Ainu aspectual forms from a Chinese perspective

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 22K19983
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: 0102:Literature, linguistics, and related fields
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: MA CHANGCHENG 北海道大学, 文学研究院, 専門研究員 (30963467)
• Project Period (FY): 2022-08-31 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: アイヌ語 / 継続形式 / 完了形式 / 意味機能 / 時間副詞 / 発話時点 / 不定時点 / 絶対的時点

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study was intended as a comparative research between Ainu and Chinese, and planned to include findings from Chinese. However, because descriptions of Ainu temporal expressions are far fewer compared to Chinese, the focus shifted to describing phenomena related to Ainu temporal expressions from the perspective of Chinese. In the first year, inspired by the phenomenon that the continuous and perfect forms in Chinese cannot co-occur, we described the meaning when the Ainu continuous forms "kor an" and "wa an" co-occur with the perfect form "a". In the following year, we focused on describing temporal adverbs indicating specific points in time in Ainu, inspired by the fact that, like Ainu, Chinese, which does not have tense, has many temporal adverbs. All these research findings were presented at conferences and submitted as papers to academic journals.

Free Research Field

文学、言語学およびその関連分野

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

アイヌ語に関する研究は、日本語や中国語と比べてその数が非常に少ない。特に、アイヌ語の時間表現に関する研究は限られており、十分に解明されているとは言えない。本研究では、中国語の視点からアイヌ語を観察し、得られた成果はアイヌ語の時間表現に関する統語的および意味的な実態を反映しており、アイヌ語学において進展をもたらしたと考えられる。また、本研究で発表した論文の内容は、危機言語であるアイヌ語の活性化に関連する取り組みに役立つと期待される。今後も引き続き、中国語の視点からアイヌ語を観察し、さらに多くの言語事実を明らかにし、アイヌ語の活性化に貢献していきたい。