Chapter 61Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms

61.1 The four formal persons

Hokkaido Ainu marks person on the finite verb. An intransitive predicate indexes its single argument; a transitive predicate indexes the combination of its subject and its object. Independent pronouns — kani ‘I’, eani ‘you’, coka ‘we (excluding you)’, asinuma ‘the fourth-person self’ — are available for emphasis or contrast and are used more sparingly than their Japanese counterparts, while the verbal index carries the ordinary work of tracking arguments Nakagawa (2024: 163–165, 169); Tamura (1972: 17). Satō describes the pattern as head-marking in the sense of (Nichols 1986): the verb, the head of its clause, bears the central information about which participants fill its valence frame, and a transitive verb may host both a subject index and an object index Satō (2025: 361).

Nakagawa recognises four formal persons, numbered 1 to 4, each with a singular and a plural, and treats the numerals as form-classes detached from any fixed speaker-or-addressee value; the mapping between form and reference is many-to-one Nakagawa (2024: 163). The fourth person is the limiting case: it is a single form-set into which everything that persons 1 to 3 cannot express is gathered, so that the referential range of those three is narrowed in turn Nakagawa (2024: 164, 174).

Terminology for this set is unsettled. Nakagawa calls it the fourth person; Tamura divides the same Saru forms into separate persons — the inclusive, the quotative, the second-person honorific, and the indefinite — counting eleven persons in all; Bugaeva uses “indefinite” and reanalyses the quotation use as logophoric; Satō treats the forms as polysemous; and Takahashi, working on Tokachi, adopts “inclusive person” as the label that unifies the otherwise disparate uses Nakagawa (2024: 174–179); Tamura (1972: 18–20, 39); Bugaeva (2012: 474–476); Bugaeva (2008: 40–43); Satō (2008: 203–208); Takahashi (2015: 205–210) ‹contested›. The form-label “fourth” or “indefinite” is used here; its referential functions are set out in the indefinite/fourth-person chapter and the honorific and logophoric chapter.

61.2 The S/A/O paradigm

The person indexes divide into three role sets. S is the sole argument of an intransitive verb, A the subject of a transitive verb, and O its object. Nakagawa presents these as separate intransitive-subject, transitive-subject, and object tables, and Bugaeva’s southern Hokkaido table gives the same Saru–Chitose paradigm in S/A/O terms Nakagawa (2024: 165–169); Bugaeva (2012: 471). The three-way distinction is load-bearing: two persons keep distinct forms for all three roles, one opposes an S=A pair to O, and two collapse the roles entirely. The rows below give the architectural cell values for the standard Saru–Chitose baseline; allomorphy, dialect microvariation, and the person-combination rules belong to the chapters that follow.

The first singular is the one nominative–accusative cell: ku= serves both S and A, opposed to the object en= Bugaeva (2012: 472); Bugaeva (2008: 32). Its forms, together with the second singular, are treated in Chapter 62 (First- and Second-Person Singular Affixes (ku=/en=, e=/e=)). The second-person cells are neutral, e= and eci= spanning A, S, and O alike. The third person is unmarked. Whether the blank reflects a zero affix or the absence of any third-person exponent is disputed: Satō argues that a zero third-person affix is required by the cap of two indexes per verb and by the ungrammaticality of three-index combinations, against an analysis that recognises no third-person affix at all Nakagawa (2024: 169); Satō (2023: 39, 47); Satō (2025: 369) ‹contested›.

61.3 Side-encoding: prefixes for A, suffixes for S

The architectural asymmetry of the paradigm is the side of the verb on which the subject index appears. First singular and second person are prefixal, or zero, in both subject roles. First plural exclusive and the fourth person switch sides by transitivity: ci= and a= stand before a transitive stem as A, while =as and =an follow an intransitive stem as S. This side-encoding is the morphological basis on which Bugaeva calls these two rows tripartite Nakagawa (2024: 166–167); Bugaeva (2012: 472); Bugaeva (2008: 32).

The object counterparts of these two sets, un= and i=, are prefixal, so each set keeps its three roles formally distinct in both shape and position. The fourth-person object i= indexes, among other referents, the narrator’s own in oral narrative Nakagawa (2024: 169):

The choice of a= over an= for the fourth-person A is itself dialectal: Saru and the western dialects use a=, while Tokachi, Ishikari, Shiranuka, and Samani favour an= under conditions that vary by locality, and Nakagawa takes an= to be the older form Nakagawa (2024: 167–168).

The boundary symbols used throughout the grammar follow a working convention: = writes the personal-index boundary and - the boundary of derivational and number morphology. The convention is deliberately neutral, because the sources disagree about the morphological status of the individual indexes. Bugaeva, on prosodic and separability grounds, distinguishes word-like =an and =as, clitic-like a= and eci=, and fuller prefixes such as ku=, en=, and i= that shift the accent kernel; Nakagawa writes the whole set with = for convenience yet flags the unusual autonomy of =an, which can be separated from its verb; Sakaguchi’s explicit clitic/affix criteria, developed for Sakhalin material, likewise rank fourth-person =an as the most autonomous subject marker Bugaeva (2012: 472–473); Nakagawa (2024: 49, 183); Sakaguchi (2024: ix, 77–85, 163) ‹contested›. The ordering and boundary diagnostics are pursued in Chapter 68 (The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering).

61.4 Syncretism and portmanteau cells

Second person collapses the role distinction: e= marks 2SG as A, S, and O, and eci= does the same for 2PL. The same eci= additionally serves as the portmanteau exponent for a first-person A acting on a second-person O, covering 1SG→2SG, 1SG→2PL, 1PL.EXCL→2SG, and 1PL.EXCL→2PL with a single prefix in place of a sequence of first- and second-person indexes Tamura (1972: 27–28); Bugaeva (2008: 38); Bugaeva (2012: 474); Nakagawa (2024: 170, 173). The surrounding clause resolves the resulting ambiguity, and the cell is developed in Chapter 64 (The eci= Portmanteau (1A→2O) and Second-Person Plural Syncretism).

The mirror configuration is less regular. Most dialectal paradigms express 2→1 with a second-person A index followed by the first-person object form, but Saru and Chitose drop the expected second-person subject and use bare en= for 2SG→1SG, Chitose extending the bare form to 2PL→1SG as well Nakagawa (2024: 170, 173); Satō (2008: 146–147).

A verb admits at most one subject index and one object index, and no third argument is ever indexed. The cap shapes ditransitive marking. With verbs such as kore ‘give’ the object index falls on the human recipient while the theme stays a bare noun phrase, a secundative pattern that Satō takes as further evidence for a zero third-person affix; Nakagawa describes the same three-place verbs through valence, with two bare object phrases and neither obligatorily indexed when both are third person Satō (2008: 147); Satō (2023: 39, 47); Satō (2025: 368–371); Nakagawa (2024: 363–365) ‹contested›. Object indexing and the three-place verbs are treated in Chapter 65 (Object Indexing: Monotransitive and Ditransitive Clauses).

61.5 Number and the fourth person

The person paradigm intersects with number at two layers. The first plural row is exclusive: ci=, =as, and un= exclude the addressee, while addressee-inclusive ‘we’ belongs to the fourth person. Tokachi confirms the same division, an exclusive first-plural series beside an inclusive fourth-person series whose forms take a plural verb even when the referent is single Nakagawa (2024: 163–164, 174); Tamura (1972: 18–19); Bugaeva (2012: 472, 475); Takahashi (2015: 206–209). The exclusive paradigm is developed in Chapter 63 (First-Person Plural and the Clusivity Question (ci=/=as, un=)).

Verb number is its own system. Hokkaido uses suppletive singular/plural stems — ek / arki ‘come’, arpa / paye ‘go’ — alongside a root-attaching plural suffix -pa and, in Saru, Chitose, and Ishikari, an outer plural pa that sits outside the person index. The minimal pair iki=an pa and iki-pa=an places the outer pa after the fourth-person suffix and the stem-forming suffix -pa before it Nakagawa (2024: 141–159); Bugaeva (2012: 471, 481); Sakaguchi (2024: 12). The Sakhalin verbal plural =hci and its relatives attach outside the person-inflected verb; their classification as number rather than third-person marking is a point on which Nakagawa and Sakaguchi converge against earlier descriptions Nakagawa (2024: 151–155, 178); Sakaguchi (2024: 77–83, 163); Baek (2021: 73). Person–number agreement is taken up in Chapter 69 (Person–Number Interactions and Plural Agreement).

Several fourth-person uses select plural morphology for a single referent. Honorific address to one esteemed person and the inclusive ‘you and I’ take the fourth-person form with a plural stem, as does much narrative first-person use outside Saru and Chitose Nakagawa (2024: 160–161, 174–179); Tamura (1972: 28, 34).

The whole semantic range of the fourth person — inclusive first plural, honorific second person, impersonal agent-defocusing, narrative first person, and logophoric reference inside a quotation — rests on this one form-set. The old account of an “elevated” literary person distinct from an everyday one is contested: Nakagawa assigns the narrative use to viewpoint and text type, Satō derives it from a first-person-plural strategy, and Bugaeva analyses the quotation use as logophoric and finds it outside folklore as well Nakagawa (2024: 174–179, 600–604); Satō (2004: 179–184); Satō (2008: 259–262); Bugaeva (2008: 40–44) ‹contested›. The fourth-person object i= must be kept apart from the homophonous detransitivising prefix i- ‘something’, whose origin is itself debated Nam (2021: 62–74); the detransitiviser belongs to the valency system and is treated under the antipassive.

61.6 Mixed alignment and the verb template

Read person by person, the system is mixed in morphological alignment: 1SG is nominative–accusative with S=A≠O, the second and third persons are neutral with S=A=O, and the first plural exclusive and the fourth person are tripartite with S≠A≠O. Bugaeva’s analysis of Hokkaido Ainu rests directly on the S/A/O paradigm and on the side-encoding of ci=/=as and a=/=an, and she characterises the language as mixed but basically tripartite Bugaeva (2012: 472, 498); Bugaeva (2008: 32).

The person indexes do not split the intransitive subject by agentivity: agentive and patientive intransitives take the same S set once valence is fixed, so the agreement paradigm is not split-intransitive in the morphological sense Nakagawa (2024: 126–127). The split that the literature pursues under that name surfaces in verb classes, noun incorporation, and valency-changing morphology, and is treated in Chapter 70 (The Split-Intransitive (Active–Stative) Core). The competing system-wide analyses — tripartite, hierarchical, inverse — are sharpened by Sakhalin work: Dal Corso rejects a tripartite component for Sakhalin in favour of a mixed nominative–neutral–inverse account, while warning that the diachrony may not carry over to Hokkaido Dal Corso (2025: 187–188, 200, 213) ‹contested›. The Hokkaido paradigm above supplies the empirical base for Chapter 71 (Tripartite, Nominative-Accusative, and the Central Alignment Debate).

The personal indexes occupy the outer argument-marking layer of the verb. Subject and object indexes precede the stem in transitives, while the intransitive S forms =as and =an follow it; derivational material — applicatives, causatives, the reflexive, the reciprocal, the antipassive i-, and the stem-forming plural -pa — sits closer to the root, and a reflexive or reciprocal fills the object slot rather than co-occurring with an object index for the same participant Tamura (1972: 35); Nakagawa (2024: 183, 196–199); Satō (2023: 40). The full ordering of these positions is the subject of Chapter 68 (The Personal-Affix Template: Position Classes and Affix Ordering).