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§ 4. The treatment of the analysed categories on a formal basis, 
though fairly consistent in the technical sense, is, however, lacking 
an explicit functional appraisal. To fill the gap, we must take into 
due account not only the meaningful aspect of the described verbal 
forms in terms of their reference to the person-number forms of the 
subject, but also the functional content of the subject-substantival 
categories of person and number themselves. 
The semantic core of the substantival (or pronominal, for that mat-
ter) category of person is understood nowadays in terms of deictic, 
or indicative signification. 
The deictic function of lingual units, which has come under careful 
linguistic investigation of late, consists not in their expressing self-
dependent and self-sufficient elements of meaning, but in pointing 
out entities of reality in their spatial and temporal relation to the 
participants of speech communication. In this light, the semantic 
content of the first person is the indication of the person who is 
speaking, but such an indication as is effected by no other individ-
ual than himself. This self-indicative role is performed lexically by 
the personal pronoun I. The semantic content of the second person 
is the indication of the individual who is listening to the first per-
son speaking — but again such an indication as viewed and ef-
fected by the speaker. This listener-indicative function is per-
formed by the personal pronoun you. Now, 

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the semantic content of the third person is quite different from that 
of either the first or second person. Whereas the latter two express 
the immediate participants of the communication, the third person 
indicates all the other entities of reality, i.e. beings, things, and 
phenomena not immediately included in the communicative situa-
tion, though also as viewed by the speaker, at the moment of 
speech. This latter kind of indication may be effected in the two al-
ternative ways. The first is a direct one, by using words of a full 
meaning function, either proper, or common, with the correspond-
ing specifications achieved with the help of indicators-determiners 
(articles and pronominal words of diverse linguistic standings). 
The second is an oblique one, by using the personal pronouns he, 
she, or it, depending on the gender properties of the referents. It is 
the second way, i.e. the personal pronominal indication of the third 
person referent, that immediately answers the essence of the 
grammatical category of person as such, i.e. the three-stage loca-
tion of the referent in relation to the speaker: first, the speaker him-
self; second, his listener; third, the non-participant of the commu-
nication, be it a human non-participant or otherwise. 
As we see, the category of person taken as a whole is, as it were, 
inherently linguistic, the significative purpose of it being confined 
to indications centering around the production of speech. 
Let us now appraise the category of number represented in the 
forms of personal pronouns, i.e. the lexemic units of language spe-
cially destined to serve the speaker-listener lingual relation. 
One does not have to make great exploratory efforts in order to re-
alise that the grammatical number of the personal pronouns is ex-
tremely peculiar, in no wise resembling the number of ordinary 
substantive words. As a matter of fact, the number of a substantive 
normally expresses either the singularity or plurality of its referent 
("one — more than one", or, in oppositional appraisal, "plural — 
non-plural"), the quality of the referents, as a rule, not being re-
interpreted with the change of the number (the many exceptions to 
this rule lie beyond the purpose of our present discussion). For in-
stance, when speaking about a few powder-compacts, I have in 
mind just several pieces of them of absolutely the same nature. Or 
when referring to a team of eleven football-players, I mean exactly 
so many members of this sporting group. With the personal pro-
nouns, though, it is "different, 

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and the cardinal feature of the difference is the heterogeneity of the 
plural personal pronominal meaning. 
Indeed, the first person plural does not indicate the plurality of the 
"ego", it can't mean several I's. What it denotes in fact, is the 
speaker plus some other person or persons belonging, from the 
point of view of the utterance content, to the same background. 
The second person plural is essentially different from the first per-
son plural in so far as it does not necessarily express, but is only 
capable of expressing similar semantics. Thus, it denotes either 
more than one listener (and this is the ordinary, general meaning of 
the plural as such, not represented in the first person); or, similar to 
the first person, one actual listener plus some other person or per-
sons belonging to the same background in the speaker's situational 
estimation; or, again specifically different from the first person, 
more than one actual listener plus some other person or persons of 
the corresponding interpretation. Turning to the third person plural, 
one might feel inclined to think that it would wholly coincide with 
the plural of an ordinary substantive name. On closer observation, 
however, we note a fundamental difference here also. Indeed, the 
plural of the third person is not the substantive plural proper, but 
the deictic, indicative, pronominal plural; it is expressed through 
the intermediary reference to the direct name of the denoted entity, 
and so may either be related to the singular he-pronoun, or the she-
рrоnоun, or the it-pronoun, or to any possible combination of them 
according to the nature of the plural object of denotation. 
The only inference that can be made from the given description is 
that in the personal pronouns the expression of the plural is very 
much blended with the expression of the person, and what is taken 
to be three persons in the singular and plural, essentially presents a 
set of six different forms of blended person-number nature, each 
distinguished by its own individuality. Therefore, in the strictly 
categorial light, we have here a system not of three, but of six per-
sons. 
Returning now to the analysed personal and numerical forms of the 
finite verb, the first conclusion to be drawn on the ground of the 
undertaken analysis is, that their intermixed character, determined 
on the formal basis, answers in general the mixed character of the 
expression of person and number by the pronominal subject name 
of the predicative construction. The second conclusion to be 
drawn, however, is that the described formal person-number sys-
tem of 

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the finite verb is extremely and very singularly deficient. In fact, 
what in this connection the regular verb-form does express mor-
phemically, is only the oppositional identification of the third per-
son singular (to leave alone the particular British English mode of 
expressing the person in the future). 
A question naturally arises: What is the actual relevance of this de-
ficient system in terms of the English language? Can one point out 
any functional, rational significance of it, if taken by itself? 
The answer to this question can evidently be only in the negative: 
in no wise. There cannot be any functional relevance in such a sys-
tem, if taken by itself. But in language it does not exist by itself.