Volumes in the Trends in Linguistics. Documentation series focus on the presentation of linguistic data. The series addresses the sustained interest in linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, grammars and editions of under-described and hitherto undocumented languages. All world-regions and time periods are represented.

Volumes in the Trends in Linguistics. Documentation series focus on the presentation of linguistic data. The series addresses the sustained interest in linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, grammars and editions of under-described and hitherto undocumented languages. All world-regions and time periods are represented.

Volume 3 is devoted exclusively to B. Piłsudski's Ainu-related materials, for their most part previously unpublished. In addition, it comprises Piłsudski's research reports on his expeditions, a superb collection of fifty prayers in Ainu as well as texts and melodies recovered from Piłsudski's famous wax-cylinder recordings of Ainu-folklore of 1902-1903. The bibliographies printed in volume 1 are extensively enhanced. Abundant illustrative material is included.

The volume is aimed at preserving invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but it possesses a huge documented stock of oral literature, yet is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages. Revolving around but not confined to its head-marking and polysynthetic character, Ainu manifests many typologically interesting phenomena, related in particular to the combinability of various voice markers and noun incorporation. Other interesting features of Ainu include vowel co-occurrence restrictions, a mixed system of expressing grammatical relations, which includes the elements of a rare tripartite alignment, nominal classification distinguishing common and locative nouns, elaborate possessive classes, verbal number, a rich four-term evidential system, and undergrammaticalized aspect, which are all explained in the volume. This handbook, the result of unprecedented cooperation of the leading experts of Ainu, will definitely help to increase the clarity of our understanding of Ainu and in a long-term perspective may provide answers to problems of human prehistory as well as open the field of Ainu studies to the world and attract many new students. Table of Contents Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Preface Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Introduction to the Handbook of Japanese Language and Linguistics Contributors Anna Bugaeva Introduction I Overview of Ainu studies Anna Bugaeva 1. Ainu: A head-marking language of the Pacific Rim Juha Janhunen 2. Ainu ethnic origins Tomomi Satō 3. Major old documents of Ainu and some problems in the historical study of Ainu Alfred F. Majewicz 4. Ainu language Western records José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente 5. The Ainu language through time Alexander Vovin 6. Ainu elements in early Japonic Hidetoshi Shiraishi and Itsuji Tangiku 7. Language contact in the north Hiroshi Nakagawa and Mika Fukazawa 8. Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Towards a classification of Ainu dialects Itsuji Tangiku 9. Differences between Karafuto and Hokkaido Ainu dialects Shiho Endō 10. Ainu oral literature Osami Okuda 11. Meter in Ainu oral literature Tetsuhito Ōno 12. The history and current status of the Ainu language revival movement II Typologically interesting characteristics of the Ainu language Hidetoshi Shiraishi 13. Phonetics and phonology Hiroshi Nakagawa 14. Parts of Speech – with a focus on the classification of nouns Anna Bugaeva and Miki Kobayashi 15. Verbal valency Tomomi Satō 16. Noun incorporation Hiroshi Nakagawa 17. Verbal number Yasushige Takahashi 18. Aspect and evidentiality Yoshimi Yoshikawa 19. Existential aspectual forms in the Saru and Chitose dialects of Ainu III Appendices: Sample texts Anna Bugaeva 20. An uwepeker “Retar Katak, Kunne Katak” and kamuy yukar “Amamecikappo” narrated in the Chitose Hokkaido Ainu dialect by Ito Oda Elia dal Corso 21. “Meko Oyasi”, a Sakhalin Ainu ucaskuma narrated by Haru Fujiyama Subject index

This is a translation from a Russian work published in 1958, one of the major works of a well-known and prolific writer. It deals with the origins of the small nations and peoples of central Siberia and northeastern Asia. Many guesses have been made about these peoples but most have not been substantiated, because of the lack of field work or because the materials on them had not been analysed and published. Levin has reviewed the old materials, gathered and analysed hitherto unpublished ones, and personally surveyed many of the peoples as a member of the Russian Northeastern Expedition. He makes use of all the data of physical anthropology, ethnography, archaeology, and linguistics on the peoples he describes and has thus provided a definitive work on a nearly forgotten segment of mankind inhabiting an extensive territory. Volume III in the series Anthropology of the North: Translations from Russian Sources sponsored by the Arctic Institute of North America and under the general editorship of H.N. Michael, Temple University.