Tracking basic Ainu vocabulary: Updates and changes of geographical distributions

This paper provides the geographical distributions and updates of Hattori and Chiri (1960), as well as the preliminary data. The basic vocabulary of the Ainu dialects collected by Hattori and Chiri (1960) is the most significant vis-à-vis Ainu dialectology. The National Ainu Museum houses the preliminary vocabulary list of Hattori and Chiri (1960). In this study, we investigated the differentiation between the published version of Hattori and Chiri (1960) and the preliminary data. The results of this study show that the dialects on dialectal boundaries often vary between the two sets of data. This not only suggests that elicitation in linguistic fieldwork has occurred but also argues that it is necessary to reconsider the use and treatment of existing materials, such as the data of Hattori and Chiri (1960).