As far as inflectional morphology is concerned, English isn't exactly a rich language. Still, the present-tense paradigm of the copular verb be shows that even English distinguishes between grammatical person and grammatical number:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | am | are |
| 2nd | are | are |
| 3rd | is | are |
Obviously, the singular forms for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Persons are all different, which means that to adequately describe English verbal paradigms, the grammatical person of the subject needs to be considered. We also see that as far as the 1st and 3rd Persons are concerned, there's also a difference between Singular and Plural. However, this is not true for the 2nd Person: here, the paradigmatic cell is filled with are regardless of number.
The same pattern is true for the pronouns, the only other part of English morphosyntax that I can think of where person and number matter. Regardless of the pronoun type (Subject or Object pronoun, possessive pronoun, or reflexive pronoun), there's always a difference between Singular and Plural in the 1st and 3rd Persons, but never in the 2nd Person. For illustration, here is the paradigm for (female) Subject pronouns:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | I | we |
| 2nd | you | you |
| 3rd | she | they |
(I assume that historically, even the 2nd Person distinguished between Singular and Plural, but that the contrast disappeared over time – perhaps thou was the historical 2nd Singular pronoun, and you was used both as a 2nd Plural pronoun and as a highly formal alternative to the informal 2nd Singular thou?)
But I'm primarily interested in present-day English: For verbs and pronouns, English morphosyntax doesn't appear to distinguish between Singular and Plural in the 2nd Person. Is there any grammatical context where we do find a contrast between the 2nd Singular and the 2nd Plural?
Best Answer
Yes, there's a difference in the reflexive/emphatic pronouns: