Chapter 67The Indefinite/Fourth Person: Forms, Reference, and Agent-Defocusing

67.1 The formal paradigm

Three verbal indexes make up the Hokkaido Ainu form-set called the fourth person by Nakagawa, the indefinite by Bugaeva, and the inclusive person by Takahashi: a= or dialectally an= as the subject of a transitive verb (A role), =an as the subject of an intransitive verb (S), and i= as the object (O). The full S/A/O architecture of all four persons is laid out in Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms); this chapter covers the internal paradigm and the referential values licensed by the row. Nakagawa (2024: §4.4.5); Bugaeva (2012: 269)

The row is parallel in structure to the first plural exclusive ci= / =as / un=: both keep distinct forms for all three roles. The S/A distinction is expressed by the side of attachment — a transitivity-conditioned position switch absent from the first singular and the second person. That asymmetry is the morphological basis on which Bugaeva calls these two rows tripartite Bugaeva (2012: 471–472); Bugaeva (2008: 32); Nakagawa (2024: 165–169, 174).

67.2 Side-encoding and allomorphy

The subject index selects its position by transitivity. With an intransitive predicate, the fourth-person subject appears as the suffix =an; with a transitive predicate, the same referent is indexed by the prefix a=. The following sentence contains both on adjacent predicates of different transitivity Nakagawa (2024: 166–167); Bugaeva (2012: 471–472).

In Saru and the dialects to the west, a= is the regular transitive-subject form. Elsewhere the longer allomorph an= appears in varying distributions: Tokachi uses an= before vowel-initial stems without first-syllable accent and a= elsewhere; Ishikari and Samani favour an=; Shiranuka mostly has an= with a= chiefly before ye ‘say’; Shizunai shows no such split. Even Saru, Chitose, and Horobetsu preserve an= in verse formulae, and Nakagawa regards an= as historically prior Nakagawa (2024: 167–168) ‹speculative›. The Hokkaido-wide quantitative distribution of the two allomorphs is incompletely documented ‹corpus-suggested›.

The clitic-or-affix status of =an and a= is contested: Bugaeva treats =an as word-like and a= as clitic-like on the basis of prosodic independence and separability; Nakagawa writes all person indexes with = as a convenient notation and separately documents the high autonomy of =an; Sakaguchi's formal clitic criterion — developed on Sakhalin evidence — converges on the same autonomy ranking for the fourth-person S form Bugaeva (2012: 472–473); Nakagawa (2024: 49, 183); Sakaguchi (2024: ix, 62–64, 77–85, 163) ‹contested›. Ordering and wordhood diagnostics are treated in Chapter 69 (The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering).

The plural auxiliary pa of Saru, Chitose, and Ishikari positions itself outside the person index (stem=an pa), while the stem-forming plural suffix -pa sits inside (stem-pa=an). Nakagawa's minimal pair from Saru makes the contrast explicit Nakagawa (2024: 158); Sakaguchi (2024: 12):

67.3 Referential range: five uses

Nakagawa lists five referential values for the same formal row — addressee-inclusive first plural, honorific second person, indefinite or impersonal human agent, the narrator or protagonist of oral narrative, and the quoted speaker inside reported speech — stressing that no single meaning covers all five Nakagawa (2024: 174–179). Tamura distributes the same Saru forms across several distinct persons in her eleven-person system; Bugaeva uses the cover label "indefinite" and reanalyses the quotation use as logophoric; Satō treats the forms as polysemous; Takahashi's Tokachi account adopts "inclusive person", arguing that the inclusive value is primary and the other uses follow from it Tamura (1972: 18–20, 28, 34, 39); Bugaeva (2012: 474–476); Bugaeva (2008: 40–43); Satō (2008: 203–208, 259–262); Takahashi (2015: 205–210) ‹contested›.

67.4 Inclusive and impersonal reference

The inclusive value fills the gap left by the first plural exclusive. The set ci= / =as / un= excludes the addressee; addressee-inclusive 'we' therefore requires the fourth-person row Nakagawa (2024: 163–164, 174); Tamura (1972: 18–19); Bugaeva (2012: 472, 475). Tokachi preserves the same clusivity split, and Takahashi observes that the inclusive/fourth-person series triggers plural verb forms even where the referent would otherwise be singular Takahashi (2015: 206–209).

In its impersonal or generic value, a= indexes an unspecified human agent on a transitive predicate. The patient remains in the O role; the verb retains transitive valence; an explicit agent-like participant may appear in a source phrase headed by or wa 'from'. Japanese translations routinely render the construction with a passive, but Ainu has no subject-promoting passive morphology: the agent does not receive subject marking, and the patient is not promoted to a nominative argument Tamura (1972: 34); Satō (2008: 203–205); Nakagawa (2024: 176–177).

Ijäs's learner grammar illustrates the same generic-human value, glossing a=nu as 'people hear (it)' in a lesson on perceptible sounds Ijäs (2023). Her notation uses a hyphen where this chapter writes =; that reflects a pedagogical convention carrying no claim about clitic or affix status.

The generic-agent prefix combines with the nominalizer p ~ pe to yield participant nominalizations of the type a=e-p 'food' (literally 'what people eat'). The following example shows a=e p in a headless relative construction:

The morphology and arity diagnostics of p ~ pe are developed in Chapter 101 (The Nominalizers -p/-pe and -i/-hi (Participant, Event, Place, Fact)).

67.5 The fourth-person object i= and the detransitive prefix i-

The object index i= belongs to the same paradigmatic row as a= and =an. In narrative and address it indexes the fourth-person argument as patient, recipient, or undergoer — the narrator's 'me' or the honored person as object Nakagawa (2024: 169).

The prefix i= is phonologically identical to the detransitivising prefix i- 'something/someone', which incorporates a generic object and reduces the verb's transitivity. The two are notated differently — = for the person index, - for the derivational prefix — and they differ syntactically: the person index occupies the O slot of an already-transitive stem, while the antipassive derives an intransitive stem from a transitive base. Tamura already keeps the two apart on functional grounds; their diachronic relationship is disputed. Older accounts derive the detransitive prefix from the fourth-person object; Bugaeva argues in the opposite direction, connecting the antipassive to O-incorporation of a generic noun; Nam proposes a generic-noun source *hi/*ihi 'thing, place' for the detransitive prefix directly Tamura (1972: 35); Bugaeva (2021: 235–239); Nam (2021: 62–74) ‹contested›. The detransitive prefix and its morphology are treated in Chapter 83 (The Antipassive / Detransitive i-).

67.6 Honorific, narrative, and logophoric uses

Honorific use applies the fourth-person row to an esteemed addressee. Nakagawa describes women addressing adult men and humans addressing kamuy in prayer; Tamura documents the same politeness value for Saru; Satō groups it with the literary-person system of oral performance Nakagawa (2024: 175–176); Tamura (1972: 28); Satō (2008: 259–262). The verb takes a plural stem even for a single referent, a number agreement conditioned by register rather than by the count of persons.

In oral narrative the protagonist's first person is expressed by the same row. In Saru and Chitose a singular narrator may appear with singular verb stems and the pronoun asinuma; Horobetsu and Shizunai display opposite mismatches between verb number and the available pronouns Nakagawa (2024: 174–179, 254–256). Nakagawa treats the narrative use as the indefinite person applied to an unanchored referent; Satō argues the literary self-reference derives from a first-person strategy and cannot be collapsed into the indefinite; Bugaeva, finding comparable uses in non-folklore Asahikawa texts, removes the dependence on an elegant register entirely Satō (2004: 179–184); Satō (2008: 259–262); Bugaeva (2008: 37–44) ‹contested›.

The fifth use — the quoted speaker's self-reference inside a reported-speech clause — is analysed by Bugaeva as logophoric: the fourth-person row tracks the discourse-source of the embedded proposition, functioning as a participant-tracking device independent of literary genre Bugaeva (2008: 37–44); Tamura (1972: 19–20, 22–23); Nakagawa (2024: 179). The social and discourse dimensions of the honorific and logophoric values are developed in Chapter 68 (Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person) and Chapter 150 (First-Person Narration, the Logophoric Fourth Person, and Reported Discourse).

67.7 Terminology and comparative note

The competing labels encode different analytical choices. Nakagawa's "fourth person" positions the row as a formal residual class within a four-person paradigm, gathering everything that persons one to three cannot express Nakagawa (2024: 163–164, 174). Tamura's Saru analysis distributes the same forms across the inclusive, two quotative persons, the honorific second, and the indefinite, treating the labels as functionally distinct values rather than a single form-class Tamura (1972: 18–20, 28, 34, 39). Bugaeva's "indefinite (IND)" foregrounds the generic and inclusive core; the quotation use is relabelled logophoric, a move supported by its occurrence outside the narrative register Bugaeva (2012: 474–476); Bugaeva (2008: 40–43). Takahashi's "inclusive person" gives the Tokachi system a unified participant label, arguing that the inclusive function is primary Takahashi (2015: 205–210) ‹contested›.

Dal Corso applies the label "fourth person" to the cognate Sakhalin AN-series by word form, while his diachronic reanalysis — which rejects the tripartite component for Sakhalin and treats the cognate system as mixed nominative–neutral–inverse — is explicitly cautioned as inapplicable to Hokkaido Dal Corso (2025: 187–188, 200, 213); Sakaguchi (2024: 26–27, 162–163) ‹contested›. For Hokkaido, the tripartite characterization of a= / =an / i= — formalized in Bugaeva's mixed-alignment account and adopted in the architecture chapter — remains the standard analysis Bugaeva (2012: 472).