User:Penarc1/4th person

In Indo-European languages, the finite verb form indicates the peron, numerus, mode, tense and genus verbi, for example "I love" is 1st person singular indicative present active. In other languages, other information can be integrated, for example, information about the object (accusative object and dative object), reference to the person addressed, and so on. In the case of the person, a distinction is traditionally made between first, second, and third person.

The first person is the speaker, the utterer (I, we), the second person is the addressee, the addressed (you, you're), and the third person is the "neutral sphere" (he, she [singular], they [plural]).

The word "person" comes from Latin, from "persona" meaning "mask" (a synonym of "larva"). The Latin word is {by mediation from Etruscan ("phersu " = "mask")} a loanword from ancient Greek, namely from "prosôpon", which literally comes from "looking forward". "-ôpon" comes from the future tense of the Greek word for "see", namely "opsomai". Besides "to see forward", "prosôpon" means "face", then, from theatrical lingo also "mask". From this developed the meaning 'the "role" symbolized by this mask' and further 'the "person" himself representing this role'.

Also the numbering we are familiar with comes from Dionysios Thrax (170/160 B.C. to ca. 90 B.C.), the author of the oldest Greek grammar that has survived to the present day, who formulated: there are three persons, the first from whom the speech proceeds, the second to whom the speech is addressed, and the third about whom it is spoken.

The model of "local deixis" speaks of near deixis (proximal, speaker), medial (second person deixis) and far deixis (distal, pressures of the "third person" who is neither hearer nor speaker). It is noted in the stages of local deixis that some indigenous languages of the Americas and, for example, Sinhala still have a 4th stage, a space very distal from speaker and hearer. Leaving the latter aside, we speak of a basic trichomy.

The numbering of persons is mostly so common, though there is also the reverse numbering pattern, for example in the terminology of the Indian grammar sentence, where instead of our "first" person, the speaker is referred to as "uttamapurusa" (last person, i.e. the one from whom the speech proceeds), instead of our "second" person the hearer is referred to as "madhyamapurusa" (middle person, i.e., the one to whom the speech is addressed), and instead of our "third" person the "neutral person" is referred to as "prathamapurusa" (first person, i.e., the one about whom the speech passes). In Hebrew grammar, the finite verb forms are also recited in the order 3-2-1: he kills, she kills, you (man) kill, you (woman) kill, I kill; they kill, you (men) kill, you (women) kill, we kill.

There are three other things to note:

The personal pronoun "he, she" is meaningful only when the third person has been named more precisely beforehand, while this is not the case for the first person (I) and the second person (you).

The plural of the first person (me) is not an "actual" plural, not an "I and me", but a combination of first person singular with one or more persons of the second and/or third person, i.e. "I and you", "I and her", "I and he", "I and she" and so on. For this reason, some languages also distinguish between "inclusive we" (including the hearer(s)) and "exclusive we" (excluding the hearer(s)). Some linguists also consider for the second person whether the plural is an "actual" plural.

The third person can be a person, but also a thing (it), for this different terms could be used. https://de.gyaanipedia.com/wiki/4._Person