The Minor Parts of SpeechLanguages with different forms for second person singular and plural in-
clude German du (informal sg.) and ihr (informal pl.); Spanish tu (informal
sg.) and vosotros (informal pl.); French tu (sg.) and vous (pl.). In French, this
distinction does double duty. It can indicate not only the person and num-
ber distinction, but also certain aspects of the relationship between a speaker
and addressee(s), most notably their relative social statuses and the degree of
intimacy between them. Thus, while the French singular pronoun tu may be
used by an adult to a child, the child would normally use vous to the adult. Tu
can be used between people who are relatively friendly or familiar with each
other; vous would be used among people who are not on friendly or famil-
iar terms, or in formal situations. The other languages have other pronouns
which indicate analogous social distinctions. German uses Sie as a polite or
formal second person pronoun, pronounced the same as sie, the third person
plural pronoun. Some varieties of Spanish use usted as a polite second person
singular form, and ustedes as a polite second person plural form. In earlier pe-
riods of English, thou and its forms thee, thy, and thine were used informally
while you and its forms were for formal use. The dimensions of status and
familiarity have been extensively discussed by linguists and anthropologists
under the terms power and solidarity, respectively, which we return to in
our chapter on Language Variation in Book II.
The person distinction is required also to account for certain verb forms,
which are most obvious in the present tense singular forms of the verb be:
first person am; second person are; third person is. Regular verbs in the pres-
ent tense distinguish third person singular from all other persons by mark-
ing it with the ending {-s}: He/she/it gives; I/you/we/they give. Modal verbs do
not indicate person at all.
Case of personal pronouns
English masculine and feminine pronouns come in three different forms: he,
him, his; she, her, hers. These different forms are said to represent different
cases of the pronouns. Which case of a pronoun to use depends upon the
relation of that word to other parts of the sentence: we use he and she when
the pronoun is the subject of a sentence; him and her if it is the object of a
verb or a preposition; and his and her if the pronoun modifies a noun. We
will use the traditional names to refer to these cases: he/she are in the nomi-
native case; him/her are in the objective (a.k.a. accusative) case; and his/her
are in the genitive.
English also differentiates other pronouns according to case. Thus I, you,
we, they are all nominative; me, you, us, them are all objective; and my, mine,
your, yours, our, ours, their, theirs are all genitive.