Observations on “Northeastern” Hokkaido Ainu dialects : a statistical perspective

A previous paper (Ono 2019, to appear) demonstrated that the assumption of an ordinal scale revealed relationships among 19 Ainu dialects in Hattori and Chiri's (1960) lexicostatistical data that were indicated philologically numerous times but without sufficient statistical clarity. This paper focuses on northeastern Hokkaido Ainu dialects that have not been as adequately researched as southwestern Hokkaido Ainu dialects (Bugaeva 2012). The author applies a statistical analysis based on an ordinal scale to five northeastern Hokkaido Ainu dialects (i.e., Asahikawa, Nayoro, Obihiro, Bihoro, and Kushiro dialects), comparing the results to those obtained employing a nominal scale. This paper’s primary results may be summarized in four points. First, previous statistical analyses (Asai 1974 ; Lee and Hasegawa 2013 ; Ono 2015) classified the Asahikawa and Nayoro dialects as northeastern Hokkaido Ainu dialects. However, the statistical analysis in this paper positions both dialects as intermediate dialects between these two groups, rather than as northeastern Hokkaido Ainu or southwestern Hokkaido Ainu. Furthermore, the author observed that both these dialects are interlinked with Sakhalin dialects. Second, the component corresponding to the distinction between the northern and southern parts of Hokkaido is first illustrated statistically. Third, the author observed a homogeneous structure among Obihiro, Bihoro, and Kushiro dialects from the statistical analysis of four northeastern Hokkaido Ainu dialects. However, the analysis of the Kushiro dialect demonstrated a heterogeneous structure among these three dialects, identifying some similarity with the Soya and Sakhalin dialects. Fourth, these results statistically suggest that Ainu dialects located to the east of Kushiro in Hokkaido present a previously unknown problem. This paper’s suggestion coincides with the geolinguistic and philological research on the Kagake Monjo (Fukazawa 2017) concerning Nemuro dialect, an Ainu dialect located to the east of Kushiro