Chapter 68Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person
The indefinite/fourth person used to refer respectfully to esteemed humans and kamuy, and as the self-reference device of the first-person narrator in oral literature (the hero's 'I'); the affix-paradigm facts of these uses, with full discourse deployment in Part XIX.
68.1 The honorific and logophoric functions in the fourth-person system
The honorific and logophoric values of the fourth person belong to the same formal row as its inclusive and indefinite uses: the transitive-subject prefix a= (dialectally an=), the intransitive-subject suffix =an, and the object prefix i=. The S/A/O architecture of this tripartite row and its agent-defocusing function are set out in Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms) and Chapter 67 (The Indefinite/Fourth Person: Forms, Reference, and Agent-Defocusing). The present chapter treats two discourse-anchored functions: respectful address to a socially elevated second person, and self-reference by a narrated protagonist or by a speaker whose words are embedded inside a quotation Nakagawa (2024: 175–179); Tamura (1972: 19–20, 28); Bugaeva (2012: 475–476).
| role | form | honorific value | narrative / logophoric value |
|---|---|---|---|
| A: transitive subject | a=, dialectally an= | honored addressee as actor on a transitive predicate | narrator or reported speaker as actor on a transitive predicate |
| S: intransitive subject | =an | honored addressee as intransitive subject | narrator or reported speaker as intransitive subject |
| O: object | i= | honored addressee as patient or recipient | narrator or reported speaker as patient or recipient |
Nakagawa subsumes all these values under a single fourth-person label; Tamura's Saru analysis separates the honorific second person and the quotative first person as distinct categories; Bugaeva's cover term is indefinite, with the quotation use reanalysed as logophoric; Satō discusses the literary and quotative functions under the literary-person problem without positing a fourth-person label; Takahashi, working on Tokachi, uses "inclusive person" for the same form range Nakagawa (2024: 174–179); Tamura (1972: 19–20, 28, 39); Bugaeva (2008: 37–44); Bugaeva (2012: 474–476); Satō (2004: 179–184); Satō (2008: 259–262); Takahashi (2015: 205–210) ‹contested›.
68.2 Honorific address to an exalted second person
The fourth-person row indexes a second person of elevated social standing. Nakagawa cites two primary contexts: a woman addressing an adult man, and any speaker addressing a kamuy in prayer; in both, the verb takes fourth-person morphology and a plural stem even when the addressee is singular Nakagawa (2024: 175–176); Bugaeva (2012: 475). Tamura's Saru account places the same frame alongside contexts of esteem toward an adult Tamura (1972: 28).
‘Where have you come from?’
Nakagawa 2024: 176; Chitose, Nakagawa ex. 140; a woman addressing an adult man
The addressee is a single person; the fourth-person S suffix =an appears on the plural motion stem arki rather than the singular ek. The evidential frame ru-we an closes the question.
The plural-stem requirement in this single-referent frame is grammatically obligatory for the honorific use. The same constraint — one referent triggering plural verbal morphology — operates across the honorific, inclusive, and narrative fourth-person functions Nakagawa (2024: 160–161, 174–176). Person–number interactions in the verbal system are treated in Chapter 70 (Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement). The syntax of prayer address to a kamuy and the attendant ritual formulas are developed in Chapter 154 (Honorific, Ritual, and Taboo Registers).
Ijäs's online pedagogical grammar documents several present-day address strategies for L2 learners, including plural-stem imperatives with the final particle yan ‘final particle (request)’ as a routine polite request, and the use of nispa ‘gentleman; master’ and katkemat ‘respected woman’ as address terms for non-relatives Ijäs (2023). The following constructed example illustrates the plural-stem polite imperative, a strategy structurally distinct from the fourth-person S suffix =an used in the honorific paradigm:
‘Please come here.’
constructed example; Ijäs 2023; Hokkaido (dialect not further specified)
Ijäs pedagogical example. The plural stem arki and the final particle yan form a polite request without deploying fourth-person morphology; it is a parallel addressee-politeness resource, not an instance of the honorific paradigm described above. Ijäs further notes that attaching nispa and katkemat to personal names as titles is not uniformly attested in traditional usage; such address conventions belong to contact and revitalization contexts rather than to the inherited verbal honorification system.
68.3 The narrator's fourth person in oral literature
In Hokkaido oral narrative, the protagonist's self-reference is expressed by the fourth-person row. The verb takes fourth-person morphology, and Japanese translations of the same passages render the protagonist with first-person pronouns, because the referent is the narrated self Nakagawa (2024: 177–179, 562). Satō discusses this under the literary-person problem; Bugaeva places it alongside the logophoric use Satō (2004: 179–184); Satō (2008: 259–262); Bugaeva (2008: 37–44). All three grammatical roles are attested. The following Saru example shows the intransitive-subject suffix and the possessive prefix together:
‘Although I returned slowly, because I was able to return home quickly, …’
Nakagawa 2024: 167; Saru, Nakagawa ex. 109; singular Saru narrator
The intransitive stem hosipi takes the fourth-person S suffix =an; a= functions as the narrator's possessive prefix on uni 'home'. Saru and Chitose allow a singular stem with a singular fourth-person narrator.
Saru and Chitose permit a singular narrator to appear with a singular verb stem, as in the example above. Dialect variation is substantial: in Horobetsu, the verb may carry a singular fourth-person index while the only available free pronoun is the plural aokay; in Shizunai, the free pronouns distinguish singular anani from plural anoka, but the verb is consistently plural Nakagawa (2024: 174–176, 254–256) ‹contested›. These opposite mismatches between pronoun number and verbal number across the dialect area indicate that the number dimension of the narrator form diverged from a common source.
The object prefix i= indexes the narrator as patient or recipient alongside a= and =an. A single predicate can carry both the agent-defocusing a= and the narrator-object i=:
‘I was named Ikuresuye.’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, Kawakami Matsuko, uwepeker folktale 7 [aa-irc/005#1]
a= on rehe is the narrator's possessive prefix; on reko it is an indefinite-agent prefix (someone named); i= indexes the narrator as the named object. The co-occurrence of fourth-person A as agent-defocuser and fourth-person O as narrator-object on one predicate yields a passive-like Japanese reading (私はイクレスイェと名付けられた).
‘Take pity on me and give me lodging.’
Nakagawa 2024: 170; Saru, Nakagawa ex. 127
The object prefix i= recurs across three transitive predicates, indexing the narrator as the entity pitied, sheltered, and given to. The homophonous detransitivising prefix i- of the antipassive construction is morphologically and functionally distinct.
The distinction between the fourth-person object prefix i= and the antipassive detransitiviser i- 'something' requires attention to syntactic context. The antipassive is treated in Chapter 83 (The Antipassive / Detransitive i-).
68.4 The debate over the literary person
Earlier analyses distinguished a "literary" person (雅語の人称) from an "everyday" person (日常語の人称), treating the narrative fourth-person as a register marker. Nakagawa rejects this bifurcation: prose tales (uwepeker) use fourth-person marking for the protagonist even though their register is conversational, while prayers (inonno itak), though formally elevated, use first-person ku= for the praying speaker. The controlling factor is discourse role: a character's story-internal self-representation takes the fourth person; a speaker's real-world first-person address takes ku= Nakagawa (2024: 600–602).
Satō advances three objections to reducing the literary person to the indefinite Satō (2004: 179–184). First, Ainu speakers and translators consistently interpret the narrative form with first-person reference. Second, the indefinite in its agent-defocusing function is referent-non-specific and incompatible with an overt free pronoun; yet narrators use asinuma alongside fourth-person verbal morphology, indicating referential specificity. Third, kamuy-yukar texts from Horobetsu use the first-plural exclusive row ci=/=as/un= as the divine narrator's person — a fact that resists derivation from an indefinite base Nakagawa (2024: 602–604). Nakagawa counters that most texts mix the first-plural exclusive and the fourth person, and that the uniformly first-plural presentation of Chiri Yukie's 1923 神謡集 is likely an editorial regularisation, since Kanari Matsu's tellings of the same material show mixed usage. The divine narrator pattern and its genre context are examined in Chapter 169 (Glossed Verse: A Yukar Heroic Epic and a Kamuy Yukar God-Song).
Bugaeva's approach sidesteps the origin question by relocating the quotation-internal use to logophoricity and documenting it in non-folklore Asahikawa reported-speech data Bugaeva (2008: 41–44); Bugaeva (2012: 475–476). Since the form appears wherever a discourse source refers to itself — in oral literature and in everyday reported speech alike — a register-based account cannot be primary. The three analyses agree on the empirical core while diverging on grammatical category and diachronic origin ‹contested›.
68.5 Logophoric reference in reported speech
When a third party's speech is embedded after the quotative complementizer sekor ‘quotative particle’, that speaker's self-reference appears as fourth-person morphology in place of ordinary first-person ku= or ci=. Tamura had already treated this as a "quotative first person" in Saru; Bugaeva reanalyses it as logophoricity in the typological sense, where a dedicated form tracks the self of the source of a reported utterance Tamura (1972: 19–20, 22–23); Bugaeva (2008: 37–41); Bugaeva (2012: 475–476).
‘"I will tell it and let another lady hear it," the uncle said.’
Nakagawa 2024: 179; Saru, Nakagawa ex. 153, after Tamura 1984: 22
Both predicates of the embedded quotation (a=ye, a=nure) carry fourth-person a= as the reported uncle's self-reference; Nakagawa notes that the actual first-person utterance would have used ku=ye and ku=nure. The narrator's own framing verb a=ye is fourth-person for the separate reason that it is the narrator's story-world first person.
The logophoric analysis receives support from non-folklore contexts. Bugaeva's Asahikawa data show the same pattern in everyday reported speech, severing the connection to elevated register Bugaeva (2008: 41–44). Nikitina and Bugaeva develop the syntactic argument further, proposing that logophoric reported speech in Ainu is a structurally distinct category, neither indirect speech nor ordinary direct speech Nikitina & Bugaeva (2021). The dialectal scope remains uneven: Nakagawa confirms the phenomenon for Saru and Chitose, while its extension to other dialects is less well documented Nakagawa (2024: 179) ‹contested›.
The free pronoun asinuma (< a= + sinuma 'oneself') is the fourth-person singular self-referential pronoun. Bugaeva notes that the consultant Ito Oda consistently glossed asinuma as Japanese 自分 'oneself', never as 私 'I', which is consistent with a logophoric interpretation: the pronoun tracks the perspective of the contextually salient discourse source rather than fixing the speaker of the utterance Bugaeva (2008: 41–43).
The morphology of the logophoric use is identical to that of the honorific and narrative uses: a=, =an, and i= serve all three. Disambiguation depends on discourse frame — quotative embedding, story narration, or respectful address — together with the number of the verb stem and the presence of the free pronoun asinuma or its plural counterpart aoka. The clusivity contrast between the exclusive ci=/=as/un= and the fourth person is developed in Chapter 64 (First-Person Plural and the Clusivity Question (ci=/=as, un=)). The sekor construction and the syntax of quotative complementation are treated in Chapter 105 (Quotative Complementation and Reported Speech (sekor)). The extended analysis of logophoric narration and reported discourse is in Chapter 150 (First-Person Narration, the Logophoric Fourth Person, and Reported Discourse).
References cited in this chapter
Bugaeva (2008) ·Bugaeva (2012) ·Ijäs (2023) ·ILCAA Ainu materials (1976) ·Nakagawa (2024) ·Nikitina & Bugaeva (2021) ·Satō (2004) ·Satō (2008) ·Takahashi (2015) ·Tamura (1972)