Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns. It also frequently affects verbs, sometimes nouns, and possessive relationships as well. Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... In pragmatics (linguistics), deixis is a process whereby words or expressions rely absolutely on context. ... The word speaker has a number of uses: In politics the Speaker is the presiding officer in many legislative bodies. ... In linguistics, an addressee is an intended direct recipient of the speakers communication. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ...

English traditionally distinguishes three grammatical persons: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

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. Most modern English speakers think of thou as a relic of Shakespeares day Thou is the old second person singular pronoun of the English language. ... In language, an archaism is the deliberate use of an older form that has fallen out of current use. ...

All other pronouns and all nouns are in the third person. Anyone or anything other than the speaker and the addressee is referred to in the third person.

When used as adjectives, they should be hyphenated like first-person, second-person, and third-person. The grid below shows what different combinations of tense and grammatical person are generally appropriate: Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ...

In Indo-European languages, first-, second-, and third-person pronouns are all marked for singular and plural forms, and sometimes dual forms as well (see grammatical number). Some languages, especially in Western Europe, distinguish degrees of formality and informality (see T-V distinction). Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... The word singular may refer to one of several concepts. ... Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ... Dual is the grammatical number used for two referents. ... Number of noun in linguistics is a grammatical category that can affects lexemes such as nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs. ... In sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a language, unlike current English, has pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee. ...

Other languages use different classifying schemes, especially in the plural pronouns. One frequently found difference not present in most Indo-European languages is a contrast between inclusive and exclusive, a distinction of first-person pronouns of including or excluding the addressee. The term inclusive, in a mathematical context, denotes that the endpoints of a set are included within that set. ... In a mathematics the term exclusive denotes that the endpoints of a set are NOT included within that set. ...

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 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. ... The Javanese language is the spoken language of the people in the central and eastern part of the island of Java, in Indonesia. ... Balinese is the language spoken by people in the island of Bali, Indonesia. ...

In many languages, the verb takes a form dependent on this person and whether it is singular or plural. In English, this clearly happens with the verb to be as follows: A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

• I am (first-person singular)
• thou art (second-person singular, extinct or archaic)
• he, she, or it is (third-person singular)
• we are (first-person plural)
• you are (second-person plural/singular)
• they are (third-person plural)

Most modern English speakers think of thou as a relic of Shakespeares day Thou is the old second person singular pronoun of the English language. ...

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 languages, the most well-known examples being Algonquian 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 Algonquian languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family (others are Wiyot and Yurok of northwestern California). ...

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", when the grammar treats them differently from ordinary third-person forms.

Use of grammatical person in creative media

In literature, person is used to describe the viewpoint from which the narrative is presented. Although second-person perspectives are occasionally used, the most commonly encountered are first and third person. Third person omniscient specifies a viewpoint in which readers are provided with information not available to characters within the story; without this qualifier, readers may or may not have such information. Narrative is a term which has several and changing meanings. ...

In movies and videogames first- and third-person are often used to describe camera viewpoints; the former being a character's own, and the latter being the more familiar "general" camera showing a scene. The second-person may also be used. For other uses see film (disambiguation) Film refers to the celluliod media on which movies are printed Film — also called movies, the cinema, the silver screen, moving pictures, photoplays, picture shows, flicks, or motion pictures, — is a field that encompasses motion pictures as an art form or as part of... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ...

For example, in a horror film, the first-person perspective of an antagonist could become a second-person perspective on a potential victim's actions. A third-person shot of the two characters could be used to show the narrowing distance between them. DVD cover showing horror characters as depicted by Universal Studios. ... The antagonist is the character (or group of characters) of a story who represents the opposition against which the heroes and/or protagonists must contend. ...

In videogames, a first-person perspective is used most often in the first-person shooter genre, such as in Doom. Third-person perspectives on characters are normally used in the adventure genre, for example Resident Evil. Since the arrival of 3D computer graphics in games it is often possible for the player to switch between first- and third-person perspectives at will. This is often to improve accuracy of weapons use in generally third-person games, or to give a better idea of the positioning of the player's character in a first-person game. A first-person shooter (FPS) is a computer or video game where the players on-screen view of the game world simulates that of the character, and there is a high percentage of combat involved. ... Doom1 is a 1993 computer game developed by id Software, and one of the most seminal titles in the first-person shooter genre. ... Action-adventure games are video games that combine elements of the adventure game genre with various action elements. ... Resident Evil, known as Biohazard (バイオハザード) in Japan, is a successful franchise of horror-adventure video games developed by Capcom. ... The rewrite of this article is being devised at Talk:3D computer graphics/Temp. ...

Text-based interactive fiction conventionally has description written in the second person (though exceptions exist), telling the character what she or he is seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments of graphical games. Zork, an early work of interactive fiction, running on a modern interpreter Interactive fiction, often abbreviated as IF, is a simulated environment in which players use text commands to control characters. ...

One of the few examples of a second-person perspective in a modern videogame is in Metal Gear Solid. During one set-piece battle, attempting to enter the first-person view instead shows the antagonist's view of the player's avatar. Metal Gear Solid, commonly abbreviated as MGS, is a stealth-based game developed by Konami and first published for the PlayStation game console in 1998. ...

See also

• Grammatical conjugation
• Grammar
• First hand