first person
135
1.6
- noun
- /fɜrst ˈpɜrsən/
:
primera persona
- When I speak, I often use first person pronouns like 'I' and 'we' to express my thoughts.
- a first-person pronoun
- first-person singular
- first-person plural
And, you know, third person, first person, we're more accustomed to that.
- And, you know, third person, first person, we're more accustomed to that.
Examples
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You're the first person I called.
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You're the very first person to call on me since our return.
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The first person who told me that was you.
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After a hard day at work, she was the first person he would call.
Fiction book (1996) -
She's the first person I want to talk to about anything that happens to me.
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After my mom died, and other than In Hye, you were the first person that treated me like family.
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And you're the first person that answered the ad.
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You're the first person I've spoken to face-to-face in a year.
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Many long-running series are written from the first-person point of view, with the sleuth as narrator.
Academic text (2008) -
In her essay, she wrote in the first person, sharing her personal experiences.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the speaker(s)' or the grammatical category for the speaker is directly derivable from combining 'first' (primary/preceding) with 'person' (grammatical role), so the composition transparently signals which participant is meant. This label is cross-linguistically common (first/second/third person), so an average B1 learner who knows the constituents will understand the MWE.
Etymology
First person comes from a simple idea: in a conversation the speaker is first, the listener is 'second', and others are 'third'. So when you speak in the first person, you use words like 'I' and 'we' to mean the person who is speaking.