Chapter 150Narrative Person and Reported Speech

150.1 Narrative perspective and person forms

A narrator can speak as a character whose experiences are presented through ‘I’. In much Saru and Chitose narrative, that participant is expressed with a=, =an, and i=, the fourth-person series. Tamura relates this usage to the person forms found in quotations of another speaker's words Tamura (1972: 26–27, §2.8).

Nakagawa distinguishes speaking as a character from the performer speaking in their own person. A prayer can have elevated wording and ordinary first-person ku=, while a prose tale with relatively conversational wording uses fourth person. Narrative person therefore does not by itself identify an elevated style Nakagawa (2024: 601–602).

150.2 Self-quotation and another speaker's words

In Tamura's Saru account, self-quotation retains ordinary first person. When reporting another person's speech, the quoted speaker is usually represented by the forms she calls the first person of quotation. Second- and third-person forms within the quotation generally retain their reference Tamura (1972: 24–25, §2.7).

The reported-speaker pattern has documented alternatives. Tamura records ordinary first-person singular and exclusive plural forms in quotations of other people. She describes them as rare in her third-party reports and notes a vivid or immediate effect in the plural comparison Tamura (1972: 24–26, examples 42–47).

Tamura treats her few examples of quoting an addressee cautiously: they were elicited through situations set up for questioning, rather than observed in spontaneous use. They cannot establish the frequency of the alternatives in conversation Tamura (1972: 25, note 8).

150.3 Character dialogue and mixed narration

Ordinary first-person dialogue also occurs inside a tale whose main narration uses fourth person. Bugaeva's Chitose example has the wives speaking about their own wish to go Bugaeva (2008: 56, §6.3.2).

Divine epics introduce another distinction. Chiri Yukie's collection consistently uses exclusive plural forms for the narrative protagonist, apart from other characters' dialogue. Nakagawa compares it with Kannari Matsu's Horobetsu and Kikuchi Kura's Bihoro texts, which mix exclusive and fourth-person forms Nakagawa (2024: 603–604).

150.4 Logophoric speech and indirect complements

Bugaeva calls speech with reported-speaker forms ‘semi-direct’ in her 2008 account and treats direct, semi-direct, and indirect reporting as stylistic options. Her later joint study with Nikitina argues that direct and logophoric speech share a syntactic structure: both permit flexible placement, peripheral expressions, and mixtures of person reference. Indirect complements have stronger restrictions on their licensing predicates and position ‹contested› Bugaeva (2008: 45–48) Nikitina & Bugaeva (2021: 616–624).

In the latter analysis, a verb following a quotation can take the addressee as its object; the presence of transitive ye does not automatically make the quoted words its object. The constructions are detailed in Chapter 105 (Quotation, Logophoric Speech, and Indirect Reports) Nikitina & Bugaeva (2021: 616–618). Bugaeva separately documents Asahikawa sekor reports with indirect interpretations, including first person referring to the reporter Bugaeva (2008: 53, examples 36–37).

150.5 Historical interpretations

The history of narrative person remains disputed. Satō criticizes an origin in indefinite-person reference and proposes literary circumlocution through plural forms, which leave reference less direct. Nakagawa proposes a fourth-person narrative basis with exclusive forms contributing the character of divine speech; he also suggests that written revision helped regularize Chiri Yukie's collection. These are competing interpretations of the historical evidence ‹contested› Satō (2004: 179–181) Nakagawa (2024: 603–604).