Saturday, July 21, 2007

Grammatical person in English

distinguishes three grammatical persons:

The personal pronouns I and we are said to be in the first person. The speaker uses this in the singular to refer to himself or herself; in the plural, to speak of a group of people including the speaker.

The personal pronoun you is in the second person. It refers to the addressee. You is used in both the singular and plural; thou is the archaic second-person singular pronoun.

All other pronouns and all nouns 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:

* I (1st. person singular)
* Thou (2nd. person singular, archaic)
* You (2nd. person singular/plural)
* He (3rd. person singular, masculine)
* She (3rd. person singular, feminine)
* It (3rd. person singular, neuter)
* One (morphologically 3rd. person singular, though semantically equivalent to "we")
* We (1st. person plural)
* Y'all (2nd. person plural, dialectal)
* Ye (2nd. person plural, archaic)
* They (3rd. person plural)

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