Person

Person is a grammatical category that distinguishes between different discourse participants. Natural languages generally distinguish up to three discourse participants: the speaker (the first person), the person spoken to (the second person), and anyone else (the third person). Some languages are analyzed as having an additional fourth person category, whose meaning varies from language to language. The answers you provide on this page will determine what values are available later in the questionnaire for the person feature (or the pernum feature; see below).

Which values of person are distinguished in your language?
none
First, second, and third
First, second, third, and fourth
First and non-first
Second and non-second
Third and non-third

Some languages are best analyzed as having subtypes of the first person for some values of the number feature. For example, inclusive/exclusive languages make a distinction in the non-singular between the first person exclusive, which does not include the person spoken to, and the first person inclusive, which does. In minimal/augmented languages, three distinctions are made: speaker and one person spoken to, speaker and one other (third) person, and speaker and more than one other person.

What subtypes does your language distinguish in the first person?
none
inclusive and exclusive in the:
other:

Please provide names for the subtypes distinguished by your language. The names you provide below will be prefixed with the appropriate person and number value; for example, if you enter a subtype named "excl" of the first person for the number values dual and plural, the system will produce two subtypes named 1dual_excl and 1plural_excl.)