In Ainu, relative positions are expressed by a kind of noun, which the author calls “position nouns”, -as well as by post-positions:-a mirror image of prepositions in western languages.
Most position nouns in Ainu have two forms: the “concept form”, which is the basic form, and the “concrete form” with a suffix attached to the stem (concept form). Many are inflected as to person. Ainu is a double-personal language and uses two sets of personal affixes:“subject-case” and “object-case”. An intransitive verb only takes a subjectcase personal affix according to the person of the subject while a transitive verb takes both a subject-case and an object-case personal affix which correspond to the persons of the subject and the object respectively. Common nouns take a subject-case personal affix: to say “my head” one says “Ihead”. On the other hand, position nouns indicating relative positions (on, under, etc.) take an object-case personal affix: one says “me-upper side” which means “on me”.
In this paper some forty position nouns are presented in five sections:§1.“on, above” and “under, beneath”;§2.“upstream” and “downstream”, directions;§3. more important and less important positions, relative direction and positions in or near a house;§4. upper and lower parts of a thing, “top”, “bottom”;§5.“up there” or high position and “down there” or low position.

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The breaking of *i is the regressive assimilation of the vowel *i of the first syllable by the vowel of the following syllable. This phenomenon is regarded in the history of Mongolian languages as one of the main characteristics of Modern Mongolian.
In this article, the author points out some problems in the current schema of the i-breaking of Khalkha Mongolian and in its application to Mongolian comparative studies.
Firstly, as we have confirmed in the word-initial position the regular retention of the vowel *i before *α as i in the Urdus, Buriat, and Kalmuck languages, the schema was applied too widely and this resulted in producing numerous exceptions.
Secondly, the current schema of i-breaking of Khalkha Mongolian failed to distiguish and confused the two types of i-breaking, i. e. one in which the traces of the vowel *i can be observed and the other with-out any traces of it.
The author maintains that the two types of i-breaking reflect the results of two different kinds of phonetic changes, on the grounds that we can observe the earlier stage of the development of the vowel *ibefore *α in Urdus, where only one type of breaking occurred.

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Basic assumptions made in the present paper are that a passive sentence be considered to be a marked form as against the corresponding active sentence and that the meaning of a marked sentence can be described on the basis of its unmarked counterpart. In order to elucidate the meaning of passives, it is necessary to clarify what is added to the meaning of an active sentence by passivization. Thus, we must concern ourselves with the question of what motivates passivization, i. e., what the functions of passivization are.
Toward that goal, this paper first sets forth the proposal that two types of passives be differentiated: they are here referred to as the ‘promotional passive’ and the ‘demotional passive’, where passivization is motivated by the promotion of a non-subject NP to subject position and the demotion of a subject NP to non-subject position, respectively. It is further argued that the principal motivations for the promotions involved in passivization are the foregrounding of affectivity and the characterization of a certain NP. Hence, two subtypes of the promotional passives are distinguished, the ‘affective passive’ and the ‘predicational passive’. On the other hand, the motivation for demotions lies in the backgrounding of an agent NP.

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