personsuffixes

Person suffixes are affixes that encode the grammatical person of the participant in an action, typically attaching to verbs to indicate the subject, and sometimes marking possession or other relations on nouns. They are a common feature of many languages’ morphology, forming a primary channel for subject-verb agreement and for linking the action or possessed item to a person.

In languages with suffixal person marking, each person–number combination has a distinct ending on the relevant word. For example, English marks third-person singular present with a suffix on the verb: she walks. Spanish uses a full set of verbal endings to indicate person and number: hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan. Russian likewise uses verb endings to mark person and number in the present tense: говорю, говоришь, говорит, говорим, говорите, говорят. Finnish provides a related pattern in possessive noun suffixes: taloni meaning “my house,” talosi meaning “your house,” talonsa meaning “his/her house,” illustrating how suffixes can encode person on nouns as well.

Not all systems are purely suffixal on verbs. Some languages employ prefixes, infixes, or auxiliary constructions to express person, and in others the pronoun may be obligatory or dropped in favor of rich verbal morphology. Possession can also be indicated with suffixes on nouns in languages like Finnish, where possessive suffixes attach directly to the noun.

Overall, person suffixes contribute to sentence structure by signaling who is involved in the action or who possesses something, forming a key element of cross-linguistic agreement and grammatical alignment.