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The categories of person and number must be considered in close connection with each other, since in language of the Indo-European family they are expressed simultaneously, i. e. a morpheme expressing person also expresses number, e. g. in Latin the morpheme -nt in such forms as amant, habent, expresses simultaneously the 3rd person and the plural number.
The category of person in verbs is represented by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, and it expresses the relation between the speaker, the person or persons addressed, and other persons and things. The 1st person, of course, expresses the speaker or a group of which the speaker makes a part; the 2nd person, the person or persons spoken to, and the 3rd, that person or thing (or those persons or things) which are neither the speaker nor the person(s) spoken to.
The category of number expresses the quantity of the subjects (one or more than one). Speaking deductively, we might build the following system of personal and numerical categories:
1st person singular — the speaker
2nd person singular—one person spoken to
3rd person singular — one person or thing (neither
speaker nor spoken to)
1st person plural — the speaker and another person or other persons
2nd person plural — more than one person spoken to
3rd person plural — more than one person or thing (neither speakers nor spoken to)
However, this system does not hold good for the Modern English verb, because there is no distinction of persons in the plural number and no distinction of numbers in the 1st or 2nd person sing. So what we actually find in the Modern English verb is this:
3rd person singular — lives All the rest— live
It is quite clear that the first item of the opposition is marked both in meaning (3rd person sing.) and in form (-s), whereas the second item is unmarked both in meaning (everything except the 3rd person sing.) and in form (zero-inflection). We ought to add that the category of mood is implied in this opposition, the form lives belonging to the indicative mood only, whereas live may also be any person of both numbers in the subjunctive mood (as far as we recognise its existence at all). Another consequence of this analysis is, that the -s -inflection in verbs conveys 4 meanings: 1) 3rd person, 2) singular number, 3) present tense, 4) indicative mood. The present tense is of course characterised by other signs as well: by the absence of the -d (or -t) morpheme denoting the past tense in regular verbs, and by alternation of the root vowel (e. g. [ı] in drinks as against [ae] in drank) in irregular verbs. But in verbs of the type put the -s is the only distinctive sign of the present.
The ending -s having four meanings to express simultaneously is of course a synthetic feature, standing rather by itself in the general structure of Modern English.
Some verbs do not fit into the system of person and number described above and they must be mentioned separately both in a practical study of the language and in theoretical analysis. We will limit ourselves to the verb can (the verbs may, shall, and some others sharing some of its features) and the verb be, which stands quite apart and, of course, is very widely used.
The verb can, as is well known, takes no -s- inflection parallel to such forms as lives, writes, takes, etc. Hence it follows that this verb has no category of person or number at all.
The verb be has a system of its own both in the present indicative and in the past. Its system in the present indicative is as follows: am/is/are in the present, was/were int the past.
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