Page:An Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary (including a grammar of the Ainu language).djvu/562

4 proved [sic] by Prof. Chamberlain in the Memoirs. Taking my Grammar as a basis and comparing it with the results of his own personal studies of the subject among the Ainu themselves he has pointed out fifteen major points in which the two languages differ. In order not to mar what the Prof. has so well put I will take the liberty of quoting the passage in extenso.

He says:—(1) Japanese has postpositions only. Ainu, besides numerous postpositions, has also the two prepositions e “to,” “towards,” and o “from;” thus: E chup-pok-un chup ahun, “The sun sets to the West.” O chup-ka-un chup hetuku, “The sun rises from the East.

(2) The Ainu postposltions are often used independently, in a manner quite foreign to Japanese idiom, thus: Koro habo, “His mother,” more literally “Of [him] mother.”—Tan moshiri ka ta pakno utari inne utara isambe paskuru chironnup ne ruwe ne, “The creatures than which there is nothing so numerous in this world are the crows and foxes.”

(3) Connected with the Ainu use of prepositions, is that of formative prefixes. Thus the passive is obtained by prefixing a to the active, as raige, “to kill;” a-raige, “to be killed.” A transitive or verbalizing force is conveyed by the prefix e, as pirika, “good” e-pirika, “to be good to,” i.e., generally, “to benefit oneself”; mik “to bark,” “e-mik,” to bark at; a-e-mik, “to be barked at.” The signification of verbs is sometimes intensified by means of the prefix i, as nu, to hear;” i-nu, “to listen.” All this is completely foreign to the Japanese grammatical system, which denotes grammatical relations by means of suffixes exclusively.

(4) The Ainu passive has been mentioned incidentally under the preceding heading. Note that it is a true passive, like that of European language,—not a form corresponding (as does the so-called Japanese passive) to such English locutions as “to get killed,” “to get laughed at.” In fact, the habit of looking at all actions from an active point of view is one of the characteristics of Japanese thought, as expressed in the forms of Japanese grammar. By the Ainu, on the other hand, the passive is