Friday 25 March 2016

Person: 1st-&-2nd Vs 3rd

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):
… the basic distinction constructed by language is not, as sometimes claimed, that between ‘me’ and ‘the rest’; it is that between ‘me–&–you’, on the one hand, and the rest — the ‘third party’ — on the other. This distinction is coded in the grammar at many places, for example in the system of modality …