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Grammatical person

Grammatical person is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Grammatical person rather than just read about it. In short: In linguistics, a grammatical person distinguishes between deictic references to one or more participants in an event. Typically, the distinction is between the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), and others (third person).

Key takeaways

  • Grammatical person belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect Grammatical person to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of Grammatical person from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

In linguistics, a grammatical person distinguishes between deictic references to one or more participants in an event. Typically, the distinction is between the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), and others (third person). A language's set of pronouns is typically defined by grammatical persons. First person includes the speaker (English: I, we), second person is the person or people spoken to (English: your or you), and third person includes all that are not listed above (English: he, she, it, they). It also frequently affects verbs, and sometimes nouns or possessive relationships.

Related classifications

Number

In Indo-European languages, first-, second-, and third-person pronouns are typically also marked for singular and plural forms, and sometimes dual form as well (grammatical number).

Inclusive/exclusive distinction

Some other languages use different classifying systems, especially in the plural pronouns. One frequently found difference not present in most Indo-European languages is a contrast between inclusive and exclusive "we": a distinction of first-person plural pronouns between including or excluding the addressee.

Honorifics

Many languages express person with different morphemes in order to distinguish degrees of formality and informality. A simple honorific system common among European languages is the T–V distinction. Some other languages have much more elaborate systems of formality that go well beyond the T–V distinction, and use many different pronouns and verb forms that express the speaker's relationship with the people they are addressing. Many Malayo-Polynesian languages, such as Javanese and Balinese, are well known for their complex systems of honorifics; Japanese, Korean, and Chinese also have similar systems to a lesser extent.

Other parts of speech

Verbs

In many languages, the verb takes a form dependent on the person of the subject and whether it is singular or plural. In English, this happens with the verb to be as follows:

I am (first-person singular) you are/thou art (second-person singular) he, she, one, it is (third-person singular) we are (first-person plural) you are/ye are (second-person plural) they are (third-person plural, and third-person singular) Other verbs in English take the suffix -s to mark the present tense third person singular, excluding singular 'they'. In many languages, such as French, the verb in any given tense takes a different suffix for any of the various combinations of person and number of the subject.

Nouns The Elamite language had person declension also in nouns, forming a word with the meaning "I/You/they, the [noun]", e.g.:

sunki-k = I, the king,... sunki-t = you, the king,... sunki-r = he, the king,...

Additional persons The grammar of some languages divide the semantic space into more than three persons. The extra categories may be termed fourth person, fifth person, etc. Such terms are not absolute but can refer, depending on context, to any of several phenomena. Some Algonquian languages and Salishan languages divide the category of third person into two parts: proximate for a more topical third person, and obviative for a less topical third person. The obviative is sometimes called the fourth person. The fourth person term is also sometimes used for the category of impersonal verbs in Skolt Saami. The so-called "zero person" in Finnish and related languages, in addition to passive voice, may serve to leave the subject-referent open. Zero person subjects are sometimes translated as "one", although in tone it is similar to English's generic you; "Ei saa koskettaa" ("Not allowed to touch", "You should not touch").

English personal pronouns in the nominative case

See also

Grammar English personal pronouns Fourth wall Gender-neutral pronoun Generic antecedents Generic you Grammatical conjugation Grammatical number Illeism Personal pronoun Preferred gender pronoun Singular they Verb

Works First Person Singular: Pearson – The Memoirs of a Prime Minister, a Canadian biographical television miniseries First Person Singular, a 2020 short story collection by Haruki Murakami First Person Singular, a play by Lewis Grant Wallace First Person Plural, a book by Cameron West Second Person Singular, a book by Sayed Kashua Third Person Singular Number, a film by Mostofa Sarwar Farooki Third Person Plural, a film directed by James Ricketson and starring Bryan Brown

References

External links

de Gaynesford, Robert Maximillian (2006). I: The Meaning of the First Person Term. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kibort, Anna (2008), "person", Grammatical Features Inventory, doi:10.15126/SMG.18/1.03

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Grammatical person

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Grammatical person claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Grammatical person before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Grammatical person ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Grammatical person

In research
Grammatical person appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses Grammatical person in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
Grammatical person is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Grammatical categories, Grammatical conjugation, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for Grammatical person outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.
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How to study Grammatical person in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what Grammatical person means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain Grammatical person out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Grammatical person in simple terms?

In linguistics, a grammatical person distinguishes between deictic references to one or more participants in an event. Typically, the distinction is between the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), and others (third person).

Why does Grammatical person matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Grammatical person?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Grammatical person.

Tags

  • Grammatical categories
  • Grammatical conjugation

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