The category of person

§ 235. The category of person in the Indo-European languages serves to present an action as associated by the speaking person with himself (or a group of persons including the speaker), the person or persons addressed, and the person or thing (persons or things) not participating in the process of speech. (Cf. with the meanings of the personal pronouns.) Thus in Russian it is represented in sets of three-member opposemes such as

читаю – читаешь – читает

читаем – читаете – читают

Likewise in Modern German we have

gehe – gehst – geht

gehen – geht – gehen

§ 236. In Modern English the category of person has certain peculiarities.

1. The second member of the opposemes

speak – speakest – speaks

am – art – is

is not used colloquially. It occurs in Modern English only in poetry, in solemn or pathetic prose with a distinct archaic flavour, e.g.:

Kind nature, thou a r t

to all a bountiful mother. (Carlyle).

The category of person is practically represented by two-member opposemes: speak – speaks, am – is.

2. Person opposemes are neutralized when associated with the ‘plural’ meaning.

A.I.Smirnitsky thinks that owing to the presence of the plural personal pronouns (we, you, they) person distinctions are felt in the plural of the verb as well.

E.g. we know – you know – they know.

This idea is open to criticism. If the verb itself (in the plural) does not show any person distinctions we are bound to admit that in Modern English the verb in the plural has no person.

Thus if we overlook the archaic writest or speakest, we should say that in all verbs (but the defective verbs having no person distinctions at all: he can, she may) the person opposeme is found only in the singular, and it consists of two members (speak – speaks), the third person with a positive morpheme being opposed to the first person with a zero morpheme.

3. Person distinctions do not go with the meaning of the ‘past tense’ in the English verb, e.g. I (he) asked.., (cf. the Russian я (ты, он) спросил).

4. As regards all those groups of grammemes where the word-morphemes shall and should are opposed to the word-morphemes will, would, one has to speak of the first person expressed by forms with shall (should) as opposed to the non-first person expressed by the forms with wilt (would). The person distinctions in such opposemes (shall come – will come) are not connected with number meanings.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 1472