Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields In Pragmatics and Linguistics, deixis is collectively the orientational features of human languages to have reference to points in time space and the speaking event In Linguistics, an addressee is an intended direct recipient of the speaker's communication Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns. In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or It also frequently affects verbs, sometimes nouns, and possessive relationships as well. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another

Grammatical person in English

English distinguishes three grammatical persons: The personal pronouns I (singular) and we (plural) are in the first person. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The personal you is in the second person. It refers to the addressee. You is used in both the singular and plural; thou is the archaic informal second-person singular pronoun. The word thou ( in most dialects is a second person singular Pronoun in English. In Language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current

He, she, it, and they are in the third person. Any person, place, or thing other than the speaker and the addressed is referred to in the third person.

See English personal pronouns, and the following articles on specific grammatical persons, or their corresponding personal pronouns:

Additional persons

In Indo-European languages, first-, second-, and third-person pronouns are all marked for singular and plural form, and sometimes dual form as well (see grammatical number). The personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. I (aɪ is the first-person, singular Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. YOU' ' is a South African magazine which is the English version of the Afrikaans family magazine Huisgenoot. He (hiː is a third-person, singular Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. A language has gender-specific pronouns when Personal pronouns have different forms according to the Gender of their Referents The English language She (ʃiː is a third-person, singular Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. A language has gender-specific pronouns when Personal pronouns have different forms according to the Gender of their Referents The English language It (ɪt is a third-person, singular Neuter pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. A language has gender-specific pronouns when Personal pronouns have different forms according to the Gender of their Referents The English language We (wiː is the first-person, plural Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. They (ðeɪ is a third-person, Personal pronoun ( subject case) in Modern English. YOU' ' is a South African magazine which is the English version of the Afrikaans family magazine Huisgenoot. YOU' ' is a South African magazine which is the English version of the Afrikaans family magazine Huisgenoot. Y'all, sometimes spelled as " Ya'll " " Yawl " or " Yaw " and archaically spelled " You-all " YOU' ' is a South African magazine which is the English version of the Afrikaans family magazine Huisgenoot. Yinz is a second-person Plural pronoun used mainly in southwest Pennsylvania including Pittsburgh, but it is also found throughout the Appalachians The word thou ( in most dialects is a second person singular Pronoun in English. In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural. In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" Some languages, especially European, distinguish degrees of formality and informality. See T-V distinction. In Sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a Language has second-person Pronouns that distinguish varying levels of

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 pronouns of including or excluding the addressee. In Linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person Pronouns and Verbal morphology,

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 he or she addresses. Many Malayo-Polynesian languages, such as Javanese and Balinese are well known for their complex systems of honorifics; Japanese and Korean also have similar systems to a lesser extent. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers Javanese is the language of the people in the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. Balinese or simply Bali is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by 3 An honorific is a word or expression that conveys esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system

In many languages, the verb takes a form dependent on this person and whether it is singular or plural. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. 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 or it is (third-person singular)
• we are (first-person plural)
• you are (second-person plural)
• they are (third-person plural)

By contrast, Interlingua uses a single verb form for the three persons: es for is, am, and are, ha for has and have, and so on. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States See also Interlingua This article is an informal outline of the grammar of Interlingua, an International auxiliary language first publicized

The grammars 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 languages, including among 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 Algonquian (also Algonkian, and pronounced both and) languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic This article is about the Salish/Salishan language For the Tacoma Washington neighborhood see Salishan Tacoma Washington. The obviative is sometimes called the fourth person.

The term fourth person is also sometimes used for the category of indefinite or generic referents, that work like one in English phrases such as "one should be prepared" or people in people say that. . . , when the grammar treats them differently from ordinary third-person forms. For example, the so-called "passive tense" in Finnish and related languages is actually not a tense, and has the same meaning as a phrase with subjects "one" or "people" in English. Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs

See also

• Grammatical conjugation
• Grammatical number
• Personal pronoun
• English personal pronouns
• Gender-neutral pronoun
• Gender-specific pronoun
• Generic antecedents
• Generic you
• Singular they
• Verb