Grammatical person

In grammar, a person is the way of referring to someone taking part in an event, such as the person talking, the person being talked to, the person being talked about. Grammatical persons are accomplished by pronouns, words used to take the place of a noun, in order to make speech easier.

The first person is the speaker referring to himself or herself. The second person is the person whom someone is speaking to or writing to.

Persons
 Pronoun Person/plurality Gender I First person singular (This comes from the person speaking) - We  First person plural (This comes from a person part of a group) - You Second person singular or plural (This comes from a person talking directly to someone.) - He Third person masculine singular / third person gender-neutral singular masculine (only for men or boys) She Third person feminine singular feminine (only for women or girls) It Third person neutral singular (This comes from a person talking about something that has no gender) - They Third person plural / third person gender-neutral singular (the singular usage is commonly accepted) -

Effect on nouns
Very few nouns are second-person nouns because people do not usually talk directly to things like tables. In fact, in English, just about the only kind of nouns that are second-person is a small group of pronouns that can be seen in the table below.

+English Personal pronouns Person  Singular  Plural Subject  Object  Possessive  Subject  Object  Possessive First I  me  mine  we  us  ours Second you  you  yours  you  you  yours Third Female she  her  hers  they  them  theirs Male he  him  his No gender it  it  its

Sometimes, a person's name is used in the second person, but that's usually just with a baby. For example, instead of saying "you sit here", one could say "Charlie sits here".

Effect on verbs
In English grammar, people do not usually have to do anything special to the verb if they use a second-person noun as a subject. In fact, the verb be is the only verb that has a special form for the second person: are. In other languages such as French though, verbs change in different ways to match the subject. In this table, tu and vous are the second-person pronouns. We can see how the verb parler (talk) changes when people use them.

   Indicative Subjunctive Conditional Imperative Present  Simple Past  Imperfect  Simple Future  Present  Imperfect  Present  Present je (I)  parle  parlai  parlais  parlerai  parle  parlasse  parlerais   tu (you, singular)  parles  parlas  parlais  parleras  parles  parlasses  parlerais  parle il (he)  parle  parla  parlait  parlera  parle  parlât  parlerait   nous (we)  parlons  parlâmes  parlions  parlerons  parlions  parlassions  parlerions  parlons vous (you, plural) parlez  parlâtes  parliez  parlerez  parliez  parlassiez  parleriez  parlez ils (they)  parlent  parlèrent  parlaient  parleront  parlent  parlassent  parleraient  

Category:Grammar