The use of evidential expression in Ainu : focusing on ruwe ne

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Other Title
  • アイヌ語における証拠性表現の用法について : ruwe neの用法を中心に
  • アイヌゴ ニ オケル ショウコセイ ヒョウゲン ノ ヨウホウ ニ ツイテ : ruwe ne ノ ヨウホウ オ チュウシン ニ
Published
2026-03-30
Resource Type
departmental bulletin paper
DOI
  • 10.14943/jais.6.063
Publisher
北海道大学アイヌ・先住民研究センター

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Description

The Ainu language has syntactic constructions, hereafter called the evidential forms. These constructions nominalize verb phrases using the formal nouns ruwe, siri, hawe, and humi, and then combine with a copula. The evidential forms mainly indicate the information source of the verb phrase. However, some usages deviate from this function. In particular, the form with ruwe has distinctive properties compared to other forms. This paper examines the usage of the evidential form ruwe ne and investigates the information source referenced by the formal noun ruwe. The results show that ruwe ne indicates new information in the discourse. Furthermore, regarding the source of information for ruwe, we propose the hypothesis that it refers to “knowledge” processed internally by the speaker from each information source. While the function of indicating new information conflicts with other functions of ruwe ne, we argue that their coexistence is possible by treating ruwe ne as a form that unconditionally declares the information is within the speaker's information territory, as in Japanese no da.

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