Extraction of regularities and geographical patterns from the basic vocabulary of the Ainu language

This paper demonstrates how to extract “regularities,” such as phonological correspondences and morphological and grammatical rules, from basic vocabulary items and create relational maps in the Ainu language. Studies on basic Ainu vocabulary (Asai 1974), are based on Hattori & Chiri’s (1960) list of 200 items taken from Swadesh’s (1954, 1955) personal letters to Hattori (cf. Hattori 1954). This basic vocabulary contains information about lexical forms as well as various lexical correspondences and rules. For instance, the regularity of the semivowel (glide) type, -iw-:-uy, can be extracted from the items ciw:cuy for ‘pierce (stab)’ and nociw, noociw:nocuy for ‘star’ (Fukazawa & Ono 2025, Ono & Fukazawa 2025). When drawing a regularity map such as a lexical form map, it may be suggested that several lexical forms are integrated into one symbol with the corresponding regularity. However, as integrating symbols may exclude dialectal details, this study proposes drawing relational maps between different basic lexical maps.