The Saru dialect of Ainu has eleven persons as shown in § 1. Two sets of forms are used to express persons: personal pronouns and personal affixes, the latter of which were dealt with in the author's “Personal Affixes in the Saru Dialect of Ainu”(1970).
In the present paper, after touching upon the etymology of the personal pronouns in § 2, the author discusses their syntactic functions in §§ 3-5.
Personal pronouns are connected with verb phrases as the subject, object or complement, with the belonging form of nouns, position nouns and postpositional adverbs to express the object of relation, and stand before certain fi nal particles. In conclusion, they are not “adverbials, ” which are used “only adverbially” as Mashiho Chiri stated in Ainu Goho Gaisetsu (1936) and “Ainu Goho Kenkyu”(1942); they are in fact a kind of noun.
When a personal pronoun is connected with a verb phrase as either subject or object, the belonging form of a noun, position noun or certain post-positional adverbs, the appropriate personal affix is attached to these forms. Contrary to what Professor Chiri stated, personal affixes do not themselves become the subject or object of verbs, or express the object of relation, they merely occur in agreement with the person of the subject, object, or object of relation.
Personal pronouns are usually omitted when this is syntactically possible and they are not indispensable semantically and no emphasis is put on them; so that on the surface the person is frequently indicated only by personal affixes.