Chapter 68Fourth Person in Respectful Address

68.1 Respectful address and the fourth-person series

Fourth-person forms can address a person respectfully. In this use, the Saru forms are a= for a transitive subject, =an for an intransitive subject, and i= for an object. Tamura treats this as second-person honorific, a semantic category sharing forms with other person categories Tamura (1972: 28–30, §2.11). Nakagawa groups it among the uses of fourth person Nakagawa (2024: 174–176). The broader series is described in Chapter 67 (Fourth-Person Forms and Their Uses).

A single addressee can take a plural verb. The following Tokachi example addresses the speaker's husband with two plural motion stems Takahashi (2015: 208, example 5).

68.2 Relationships and speaker differences

Tamura's Saru account associates the honorific especially with women's address to adult men. It also records family exceptions: mothers addressing sons and older sisters addressing younger brothers can retain ordinary second-singular forms after the men reach adulthood Tamura (1972: 28–29). Her consultants also differ over respectful address to women. Hattozawa Fujino allows honorific address in some such circumstances; Hiraga Sada describes ordinary second person even toward a woman of high status Tamura (1972: 30).

The age at which address changes is consequently part of a speaker's reported practice. Tamura explicitly cautions against treating one consultant's approximate age threshold as a precise general rule Tamura (1972: 29). Nakagawa similarly presents the gender and status associations as tendencies and records uses outside the most frequent pattern Nakagawa (2024: 176, 530).

68.3 Prayer and regional alternatives

Fourth-person address occurs in prayers, but the addressee's being a deity does not determine the person form. Nakagawa juxtaposes Saru prayers from the same speaker that use fourth person for a protective deity and ordinary second person for the tsunami deities Nakagawa (2024: 176, examples 142–143). The choice has to be understood within the particular address tradition.

Ishikari differs from the Saru pattern. Tamura describes ordinary respectful singular address with the second-plural series, including the pronoun esokay, and fourth-person anokay for a higher level of respect. Her Ishikari consultant allows both toward a husband. Saru second-plural ecioka lacks that corresponding honorific use in her account Tamura (1972: 30). Nakagawa summarizes the regional contrast through Tamura's later description Nakagawa (2024: 530, citing Tamura 1988a:22–23).

For Tokachi, Takahashi records honorific singular anokay and reports anutari for several addressees. He notes that the latter honorific use was not recorded in a sentence example in his material Takahashi (2015: 208). Refsing's Shizunai description also emphasizes address through status nouns Refsing (1986: 218).

68.4 Honorific objects and different referents

Both indexes in this example belong to the series called fourth person here, yet they refer to different participants and have different functions. Tamura uses such combinations in her argument for distinguishing the semantic categories. When subject and object are the same participant, reflexive derivation is relevant instead Tamura (1972: 35). A common numerical label for two forms does not make their referents identical.

68.5 Honorific, narrative, and quoted-speaker reference

Honorific address refers to the listener. Narrative fourth person follows a character's perspective, while quoted-speaker uses represent someone else's words or thoughts. These functions can differ in verbal number: Saru/Chitose honorific singular takes plural stems, whereas a singular narrator or quoted speaker can take singular stems Nakagawa (2024: 176, 178–180); Bugaeva (2012: 475–476).

Quoted-speaker marking also depends on dialect and whose speech is repeated. Nakagawa notes ordinary first person in self-quotation by the current speaker Nakagawa (2024: 471, example 1087). Takahashi's everyday Tokachi data retain ordinary first person in reported speech, although literary passages may switch person series Takahashi (2015: 207, 210–211). These distributions keep the honorific analysis distinct from an unrestricted rule about all represented speech.