Polysynthesis in Ainu Page 1 of 35 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2015. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 16 November 2017 Abstract and Keywords Ainu is a typical polysynthetic language in that a single complex verb can express what takes a whole sentence in most other languages. A single verb form may include more than one heavy element: up to two applicative prefixes (out of three), two causative suffixes (out of five), two incorporated objects, one lexical prefix (out of two originating in nouns ‘head’ and ‘bottom’), one verbalizing suffix (originating in the verb ‘make’), as well as reciprocal, reflexive, and general object (=antipassive) prefixes and agreement affixes for the first/second person subject and object. The degree of combinability of voice markers and noun incorporation is spectacular. Nevertheless, it has been claimed that Ainu deviates from more typical polysynthetic languages in having less freedom of word order, interrogative phrases in situ, and unrestricted morphological causatives (Baker 1996). This chapter aims to distinguish what Ainu shares with other polysynthetic languages from what is unique. Keywords: Ainu, applicatives, noun incorporation, unrestricted morphological causatives, interrogative phrases, word order 41.1 Introduction THIS chapter will discuss Ainu (isolate; Northern Japan), which is often cited as an example of a typical polysynthetic language. Indeed, a single complex verb in Ainu can express what takes a whole sentence in most other languages, as it can include more than one heavy element: up to two incorporated objects, one lexical prefix (out of two originating in the nouns ‘head’ and ‘bottom’), one verbalizing suffix (originating in the verb ‘make’) and pronominal affixes for the first/second person subject and object, as well Polysynthesis in Ainu Anna Bugaeva The Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis Edited by Michael Fortescue, Marianne Mithun, and Nicholas Evans Print Publication Date: Sep 2017 Subject: Linguistics, Morphology and Syntax, Languages by Region Online Publication Date: Nov 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199683208.013.48 Oxford Handbooks Online