In Modern English, the word "you" is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most[ citation needed ] modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers.
In Modern English, the word "you" is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most[ citation needed ] modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers.
You comes from the Proto-Germanic demonstrative base *juz-, *iwwiz from Proto-Indo-European *yu- (second-person plural pronoun). [1] Old English had singular, dual, and plural second-person pronouns. The dual form was lost by the twelfth century, [2] : 117 and the singular form was lost by the early 1600s. [3] The development is shown in the following table. [2] : 117, 120, 121
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OE | ME | Mod | OE | ME | Mod | OE | ME | Mod | |
| Nominative | þu | þu | — | ġit | — | ġe | ȝē | you | |
| Accusative | þe | þē | inc | ēow | ȝou | ||||
| Dative | |||||||||
| Genitive | þīn | þī(n) | incer | ēower | ȝour(es) | your(s) | |||
Early Modern English distinguished between the plural ye and the singular thou . As in many other European languages, English at the time had a T–V distinction, which made the plural forms more respectful and deferential; they were used to address strangers and social superiors. [3] This distinction ultimately led to familiar thou becoming obsolete in modern English, although it persists in some English dialects.
Yourself had developed by the early 14th century, with the plural yourselves attested from 1520. [4]
In Standard Modern English, you has five shapes representing six distinct word forms: [5]
Although there is some dialectal retention of the original plural ye and the original singular thou, most English-speaking groups have lost the original forms. Because of the loss of the original singular-plural distinction, many English dialects belonging to this group have innovated new plural forms of the second person pronoun. Examples of such pronouns sometimes seen and heard include:
You prototypically refers to the addressee along with zero or more other persons, excluding the speaker. You is also used to refer to personified things (e.g., why won't you start? addressed to a car). [25] You is always definite even when it is not specific.
Semantically, you is both singular and plural, though syntactically it is almost always plural: i.e. always takes a verb form that originally marked the word as plural, (i.e. you are, in common with we are and they are).
The practice of referring to oneself as you, occasionally known as tuism, [26] [27] is common when talking to oneself. [28] [29] It is less common in conversations with others, as it could easily result in confusion. Since English lacks a distinct first person singular imperative mood, you and let's function as substitutes.
You is used to refer to an indeterminate person, as a more common alternative to the very formal indefinite pronoun one . [30] Though this may be semantically third person, for agreement purposes, you is always second person.
You almost always triggers plural verb agreement, even when it is semantically singular.
You can appear as a subject, object, determiner or predicative complement. [5] The reflexive form also appears as an adjunct. You occasionally appears as a modifier in a noun phrase.
Pronouns rarely take dependents, but it is possible for you to have many of the same kind of dependents as other noun phrases.
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Singular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs, and themselves, is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, to refer to an unknown person, or to refer to every person of some group, in sentences such as:
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.
The T–V distinction is the contextual use of different pronouns that exists in some languages and serves to convey formality or familiarity. Its name comes from the Latin pronouns tu and vos. The distinction takes a number of forms and indicates varying levels of politeness, familiarity, courtesy, age or even insult toward the addressee. The field that studies and describes this phenomenon is sociolinguistics.
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Ye is a second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative), spelled in Old English as "ge". In Middle English and Early Modern English, it was used as a both informal second-person plural and formal honorific, to address a group of equals or superiors or a single superior. While its use is archaic in most of the English-speaking world, it is used in Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada and in some parts of Ireland, to distinguish from the singular "you".
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