Chapter 170A Glossed Inonno-itak (Ritual Prayer)
A ritual prayer (inonno-itak) text glossed and annotated, showcasing the elevated/honorific register, formulaic parallelism, and direct benedictive address to the kamuy.
170.1 Prayer speech in the genre system
Prayer speech — inonno itak ‘prayer words’ or kamuy nomi ‘divine worship / prayer ceremony’ — belongs to the chant (唱え言) macro-category of Ainu oral performance, whose distinguishing feature is that the speaker's will is directed toward a non-present audience: deities, spirits, the dead, or distant humans Endō (2022: §2.3). The chant category is set out alongside the narrative and song categories in Chapter 149 (The Oral-Literature Genre System and Its Grammatical Signatures); the present chapter treats the grammatical and register properties of prayer speech specifically.
Within the chant sub-system, prayer (kamuy nomi itak ‘divine-worship words’) is distinguished from incantation by improvisation: a prayer is composed fresh each time, to the worshipper's own melody, whereas an incantation is memorised word-for-word and shared with a fixed community tune Endō (2022: §2.3). Prayer is further distinguished from the speech-act of public negotiation (caranke ‘formal dispute / ceremonial debate’) by its divine addressee. The genre boundaries are set out in the table below.
| type | addressee | performer | form | fixed/improvised |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| prayer (kamuy nomi itak; inonno itak) | deities | adult men | melodic | improvised; personal melody |
| incantation | deities | any age or sex | melodic | fixed word-for-word; shared melody |
| negotiation (caranke) | humans | adult men | melodic/spoken | improvised |
| greeting (uwerankarap itak) | humans | mainly men | melodic | formulaic but flexible |
| funeral words | the dead | — | — | — |
(After Endō (2022: §2.3).) Both kamuy nomi ‘divine worship’ and inonno itak ‘prayer words’ name the prayer register, the former foregrounding the act of worship and the latter the word-substance of the address. Kayano (1996: s.v. kamuynomi) is silent on the etymology of nomi ‘worship, revere’; in attested prose, narrators embed both terms when describing a ceremony. The corpus of 209,878 sentences returns kamuynomi 405 times (rank 405) and inonno 203 times (rank 675), though these counts fold together metalinguistic mentions in narrative texts with tokens in actual prayer performance ‹corpus-suggested›.
170.2 Performative context: kamuy-nomi and the ceremony
A kamuy nomi is an address to the divine world conducted at the altar (nusa ‘sacred stick altar’) or the hearth. The fire deity (ape huci ‘fire grandmother’) is invoked first in every prayer, as the goddess who relays human words to the gods; all subsequent divine recipients are addressed through her Endō (2022: §2.3). Prayer is structurally a two-stage act of communication: worshipper → fire deity → target deity. The right to lead prayer is restricted to adult men ‹consensus›; women's formal expression of gratitude takes the verbal gesture of hinna ‘thanks (women)’ accompanied by raymik ‘stroking below the nose with the index finger’, while men perform onkami ‘bow with both hands’ (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024-12-26, asserted; aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026)).
The material offerings that accompany prayer — inaw ‘wooden prayer-stick (shaved wood offering)’, fermented millet wine (sake), and dumplings (sito) — are enumerated in narrative prose when speakers describe the ceremony from outside it. In one Saru uwepeker, the narrator 川上まつ子 lists the offerings: kamuynomi atpa ne, a=nomi wa inaw ne ciki sake ne ciki sito ne ciki pirka uske 'at the start of the kamuy-nomi, [we] worship and (offer) fine things — inaw, sake, dumplings…' ILCAA Ainu materials (1976) (川上まつ子, AA研 uwepeker 12, Saru). The disjunctive X ne ciki 'whether it be X' is an enumerating formula in elevated narrative, not specific to prayer speech itself — see the genre taxonomy chapter.
The ceremonies associated with prayer speech include the seasonal worship calendars (Asirpanomi ‘New Year's prayer’, Cinomisirkamuynomi ‘mid-year prayer’, Asircepnomi ‘first-salmon prayer’; nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024-03-18, asserted; aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026)) and the bear-sending ceremony. The verb forms for the sending ceremonies are semantically distinct: omante ‘send home (the bear cub)’ / hopunire ‘send to the mountain (wild-caught animals)’ / iwakte ‘send off (the dog)’ (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2024-11-17, asserted, citing 欠ヶ端和也 2016; aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026)). The prayer speech that accompanies these ceremonies follows the same grammatical register as all kamuy-nomi, regardless of the ceremony type.
170.3 The register of prayer: atomte-itak
Prayer speech belongs to the elevated register atomte itak ‘ornamented/poetic language’ (雅語), which is distinguished from everyday speech (yayan itak ‘ordinary language’) by a set of grammatical and lexical properties described in Chapter 153 (The Elevated/Poetic Register: Archaic Morphology and Formulaic Diction). Kindaichi's ranking of genres by elegant-language density — greeting < prayer < incantation < caranke < yukar — places prayer above everyday greeting speech but below the heaviest verse genres Endō (2022: §3). In Nakagawa's reformulation, elegant and everyday language are not a binary but stages on a verse/improvisation continuum, and the prayer sub-register is sufficiently distinct from the yukar sub-register that Nakagawa proposes a prayer-word vs. yukar-word classification as more analytically useful than the simple elegant/everyday dichotomy Endō (2022: §3.4) ‹contested›.
Four defining properties of atomte itak (as formulated in Nakagawa 2001a[1987], via Endō (2022: §3)) apply to prayer speech: (1) verse structure built on five- or four-syllable line units; (2) formulaic phrases deployed to meet the syllable count; (3) morphologically more complex and polysynthetic forms than their everyday equivalents; and (4) a distinct, genre-conditioned vocabulary. Properties (3) and (4) are examined in §§ applicative morphology and prayer vocabulary below; property (2) in Chapter 152 (Parallelism, Couplets, and Word-Pair Doublets).
170.4 Grammatical hallmarks of prayer speech
170.4.1 Person marking: first-singular ku- in prayer
The most striking person-marking contrast between prayer speech and narrative oral literature is that prayer uses the first-person singular prefix ku= ‘1SG agent’ (and suffix =an ‘1SG intransitive subject’ in singular intransitives) where verse narrative uses the fourth person a= ‘4th-person agent’. In narrative genres — heroic epic, divine epic, and prose tale — the protagonist narrates in a non-everyday first person realized by the fourth-person affixes a= / =an, which indexes the narrative voice with a degree of indirection compatible with the "dream-origin" hypothesis for oral literature Satō (2008: 259–261); the full account of this fourth-person narrative function is given in Chapter 150 (First-Person Narration, the Logophoric Fourth Person, and Reported Discourse) and Chapter 68 (Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person).
Prayer speech addresses the deities directly in the worshipper's own voice, and uses ku= accordingly. An attested prayer text from the Monbetsu region (鍋澤モトゾウ /Motoanrek, narrator; cited via Endō (2022: §2.3)) shows the forms ku-e-ko-pase-… and k=e-ko-onkami 'I reverently worship [you]' — both built on the first-person singular prefix ku- / k- (reduced allomorph before a vowel-initial stem), not the fourth person. The contrast with narrative is thus: fourth person in narrative oral literature, first singular in prayer ‹corpus-suggested›. See Chapter 67 (The Indefinite/Fourth Person: Forms, Reference, and Agent-Defocusing) and Chapter 62 (Architecture of the Personal-Affix System: The Four Persons and the S/A/O Paradigms) for the person paradigm.
Attested narrative prose confirms the iterative worship pattern with the fourth-person index. A Saru uwepeker records the protagonist worshipping "twice and three times":
‘[She] worshipped greatly, twice and three times.’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, 川上まつ子, AA研「uwepeker 民話8(その1)」[aa-irc/006#164]
The fourth-person a= is zero-marked here (null allomorph in narrative prose). The numeral-adverb frame tu…re… ('twice…thrice…') with ray (intensifier) is the standard formulaic expression of repeated ritual action. Contrast the 1SG ku= in prayer proper (§person-marking).
170.4.2 Applicative case-marking
Prayer belongs to the elevated register's most characteristic morphological pattern: locative and goal relations are expressed by applicative prefixes (e-, o-, ko-) rather than by postpositional case particles Satō (2008: 263); Endō (2022: §3.4). The applicative system is described in Chapter 153 (The Elevated/Poetic Register: Archaic Morphology and Formulaic Diction); what is distinctive in prayer is the density of stacked applicatives — two or more prefixes on the same verb, encoding simultaneously the goal deity and the manner of approach. The Monbetsu prayer text cited above shows k=e-ko-onkami: the goal applicative ko- ‘goal/recipient applicative’ marks the deity as the target of worship, and the additional e- ‘path/domain applicative’ encodes the dimension of address Endō (2022: §2.3).
The contrast between everyday and elevated locative marking is illustrated in Satō (2008: 263): the everyday form uses the particle ta ‘locative case particle’ — tanto Ukurmem ta ku-sirepa 'I arrived at Ukurmem today' — whereas the elevated form marks the same relation with the goal applicative ko-:
‘Now I arrived at the divine woman's house.’
Satō 2008: 263; Chitose
Satō 2008 ex. 20 (Chitose): elegant-register example contrasting with the colloquial particle-marked form. The goal applicative ko- incorporates the locative relation that would be marked by ta in everyday speech. Here the fourth-person a= marks the (narrative) first person, illustrating the register's applicative morphology in a verse context; in prayer proper, ku- would replace a= (see §person-marking).
The same goal-applicative pattern recurs in narrative prose. A Saru uwepeker records the iterative worship frame with the applicative prefix on the verb and the fourth-person narrative index:
‘Having worshipped [the deity] again and again, finally…’
ILCAA Ainu materials 1976; Saru, 川上まつ子, AA研「uwepeker 民話8(その2)」[aa-irc/007#276]
The goal applicative ko- marks the deity as the target of worship; the fourth-person a= indexes the narrative protagonist. The verb reduplication (ko-onkami a ko-onkami a) is the standard iterative-intensive frame in ritual narrative, paralleling the 'twice and three times' pattern in §person-marking.
In prayer speech the same applicative morphology applies, but with the first-singular prefix. The pattern k=e-ko- combines two applicative prefixes: ko- for the divine recipient and e- for the domain of address. Multiple applicative stacking is an established property of the elevated register and is treated typologically in Chapter 153 (The Elevated/Poetic Register: Archaic Morphology and Formulaic Diction).
170.4.3 Prayer-specific vocabulary and honorific epithets
The lexical register of prayer is genre-conditioned in a stronger sense than the elevated/everyday dichotomy alone would predict: certain epithets and noun phrases occur only in prayer and are not found in everyday speech or in other verse genres. Endō identifies this as a property that motivates treating prayer vocabulary as a distinct sub-class of the elevated register rather than simply a variety of the yukar lexicon Endō (2022: §3.4).
The fire deity provides the clearest documented case. In everyday speech and in the divine epic (kamuy yukar), the fire deity is called ape huci ‘fire grandmother’. In prayer, two distinct epithets replace this:
| genre / register | form | gloss | source |
|---|---|---|---|
| everyday; kamuy yukar | ape huci | 'fire grandmother' | Endō (2022: §1, §3.4) |
| prayer only | mosir kor huci | 'grandmother who rules the land' | Endō (2022: §2.3) |
| prayer; incantation | i-resu huci / i-resu kamuy | 'the grandmother/deity who raised me' | Endō (2022: §1, §2.3, §3.4) |
The epithet mosir kor huci 'grandmother who rules the land' was documented in the prayer text of 鍋澤モトゾウ (Motoanrek, Monbetsu; cited via Endō (2022: §2.3)) and is described by Endō as "not found in any other genre". The epithet i-resu huci (where i-resu- ‘raise me; my raiser’ = 1.O-raise = 'the one who raised me') or its kamuy-variant i-resu kamuy references the fire deity's role as the deity who reared and protects the community, a relationship that everyday ape huci does not encode Endō (2022: §3.4). Endō (2009, cited via Endō (2022: §3.4)) further notes that the modifier kamuy ‘god; splendid (modifier)’ with the meaning 'splendid' or honorific intensifier occurs in heroic epics but not in prayer, a further sub-register distinction within elevated speech ‹corpus-suggested›.
The elegant kin terms documented in the lexicon also belong to this prayer-adjacent register: ona ‘father (literary/formal)’ and unu ‘mother (literary/formal)’ are the elevated equivalents of the colloquial haca ‘father (colloquial)’ / hapo ‘mother (colloquial)’ (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord, 2026-06-15, asserted; aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026)). Their attestation in prayer contexts has not been independently verified from prayer texts, but the community observation is consistent with the elegant-register lexical substitution described in Endō (2022: §3) ‹corpus-suggested›.
170.4.4 The ruwe tapan ceremonial closure
Prayer utterances, and formal speech-acts that invoke prayer register, frequently close with the frame ruwe tapan na, a ceremonial assertion tail. In Tamura (1996) the frame is marked as a register-specific feature of formal/ ceremonial speech; it appears in Endō (2022: §2.3) prayer contexts and is also documented in other elevated speech (the greeting and negotiation genres). The frame combines the evidential formal noun ruwe ‘track, fact (evidential nominalization)’ — the same element treated as an inferential evidential in Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential) — with the proximate demonstrative tapan ‘this (proximate)’ in place of the copula ne. The effect is to assert the clause content as an already-established fact that the addressee can witness directly; in prayer speech, the deity is the witness Endō (2022: §2.3); Tamura (1996: s.v. ruwe tapan).
sonno yayrayke kewtum ku=kor wa ku=onkamuy ruwe tapan na
‘Truly with a grateful heart I offer worship — this is a fact.’
Ainu Koraci 1991; Hokkaido (dialect not further specified), Ōno Tetsuhito, Ainu Times issue 41 (Samani)
The source text has ku=onkamuy, a form with final -y not found in Saru/Chitose documentation of onkami; it may reflect Samani dialect phonology or a different stem shape. Morphemic line normalised to onkami; the ain line gives the source form. ruwe tapan na is the ceremonial assertion frame.
The full evidential system built on formal nouns is set out in Chapter 120 (The Nominalization-plus-Copula Evidential Schema). What the prayer use adds is that ruwe tapan (versus the more common ruwe ne) is register-marked: it is a ceremonial variant found in formal genres and not in everyday assertion. Whether the selection of tapan 'this' over ne (copula) encodes a special speech-act value — presenting the prayer content as observable to the divine audience — or whether it is simply a lexically frozen formulaic closure is not settled by the available sources ‹speculative›.
170.4.5 Number agreement in the elevated register
A diagnostic of elevated speech reported for both Saru and Chitose is the number-agreement override: in everyday speech, the suffix =an combines only with a plural verb form (e.g., arki=an ‘come.PL=4.S’ 'we come'), never with a singular stem (*ek=an would be ungrammatical in conversation). In the elevated register, =an may appear on a singular verb form — ek=an 'I come (sg.)' — to index the first-person narrative voice of the verse persona Satō (2008: 263); Endō (2022: §3.4). As prayer speech uses the first-singular ku= rather than the fourth-person a=, the number-agreement override in its narrative form does not apply within prayer itself; but the wider pattern of agreement relaxation is part of the atomte-itak grammar that prayer shares with yukar and kamuy yukar.
170.5 Prayer vs. incantation: fixed and improvised chant
The prayer/incantation contrast rests on a single axis: prayer is improvised ("not memorised like scripture; spun out by improvisation, different each time", Nakagawa 2016: 16, cited via Endō (2022: §2.3)), while incantation is word-for-word fixed and communally shared. Both use melody; both address deities; both belong to the chant category. Grammatically, the shared elevated-register morphology (applicatives, archaic vocabulary, number override) applies to both, since both are composed in atomte itak. The improvised character of prayer means that no canonical prayer text has the status of a fixed literary work in the way that a kamuy yukar or yukar text does: prayers are attested only as specimens preserved in recordings or transcriptions, not as memorized texts reproduced with authority by named successors Endō (2022: §2.3).
At the same time, prayer is heavily formulaic at the level of the phrase and the opening sequence (address to the fire deity; enumeration of offerings), even though the full utterance is improvised. This is the pattern Nakagawa identifies for the elevated register generally: formulae — fixed verse phrases that are learned and re-deployed — are the unit of memorisation, not the text Endō (2022: §3). The formulaic patterns in prayer overlap with those in yukar and kamuy yukar (couplet structures, tu ~ / re ~ 'two ~ / three ~' intensification doublets, applicative periphrases) and are described in Chapter 152 (Parallelism, Couplets, and Word-Pair Doublets).
170.6 Attestation and source coverage
Actual prayer texts preserved in audio or transcription are sparser in the accessible Hokkaido corpus than narrative texts, for reasons Endō notes: prayer is a performative act tied to ceremony, not a memorised genre reproduced for entertainment or transmission Endō (2022: §2.3). The Hokkaido corpus (209,878 sentences) contains metalinguistic mentions of prayer words embedded in narrative (uwepeker, kamuy yukar) rather than extended stretches of prayer speech itself. The primary documented prayer text accessible for grammatical analysis is the Monbetsu (Biratori) example attributed to 鍋澤モトゾウ (Motoanrek), cited and analysed by Endō (2022: §2.3); further attested prayer language appears in the Biratori oral-literature archives Biratori Ainu oral literature (1969) and in the ILCAA Ainu language materials ILCAA Ainu materials (1976) through prosodic and formulaic phrases embedded in narrators' own metalinguistic commentary.
The renewal of prayer speech in the revitalisation era has produced written specimens — the Ainu Koraci (1991) periodical includes self-composed prayer formulas by speakers including 大野徹人 (Samani) — but these are modern compositions; they attest living competence in the prayer register rather than traditional continuous transmission. The evidential tail ruwe tapan na glossed above (§ruwe tapan) comes from such a modern specimen. The distinction between documented traditional prayer texts and revitalisation-era compositions is maintained throughout; the register properties described in this chapter are drawn from traditional materials unless stated otherwise.
The grammar of the prayer register intersects with several other chapters of Part XIX and Part X: the elevated applicative apparatus is treated comparatively across genres in Chapter 153 (The Elevated/Poetic Register: Archaic Morphology and Formulaic Diction); the honorific and logophoric uses of the fourth person (relevant to how deity address and narrative voice interact) are analysed in Chapter 68 (Honorific and Logophoric Uses of the Fourth Person); the genre-conditioned distribution of the evidential system (including ruwe tapan) appears in Chapter 155 (Narrative TAM and Evidential Patterning by Genre); and the full honorific and taboo register (including hunting-taboo vocabulary and in-law speech, which shares some properties with prayer-register avoidance strategies) is in Chapter 154 (Honorific, Ritual, and Taboo Registers).
References cited in this chapter
Ainu Koraci (1991) ·aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) ·Biratori Ainu oral literature (1969) ·Endō (2022) ·ILCAA Ainu materials (1976) ·Kayano (1996) ·Satō (2008) ·Tamura (1996)