# The Three Persons of Grammar Argument ## Intro Every language anyone has studied has a way to say "I," a way to say "you," and a way to talk about someone else. Linguists call these first, second and third person. They are among the few features found in all human languages. Notice something about them. "I" and "you" are not just two more things in the world. They are the two ends of a conversation, someone speaking and someone spoken to. Babies live in that "I and you" long before they talk about anything else: at two months they are already trading smiles and sounds with a parent, and only later do they start pointing at a third thing to share it. Philosophers have argued for a long time that "I" and "you" cannot be reduced to a description of objects. Something is lost when every person becomes a "he" or an "it." If the deepest level of reality is impersonal, all "it," then persons speaking to persons are a late accident. But Christianity says the deepest level of reality is personal: the Father speaks to the Son, the Son answers the Father, and the Spirit is the bond between them. If that is true, then a world full of "I" and "you" is what you would expect. The Three Persons of Grammar Argument says our grammar fits the Trinity. ## In full The Three Persons of Grammar Argument is a comparative likelihood argument from the person structure of language, mind and development. Three bodies of evidence support its premises. Linguistic typology finds person a universal grammatical category (Greenberg's Universal 42; Siewierska's survey of over 700 languages), with the speaker and addressee forming a privileged pair over against the third person, which Benveniste called the "non-person." Philosophy of mind argues that first-person facts (Perry's essential indexical; Nagel's view from nowhere) and second-person reasons (Darwall) do not reduce to third-person description. Developmental psychology finds that dyadic, face-to-face exchange (Trevarthen's primary intersubjectivity) precedes triadic joint attention to objects (Tomasello and colleagues). The spine (P1 to P5) argues that a reality in which irreducible persons-in-address are basic to language and mind is far more expected if the ground of being is itself persons in eternal address, as Trinitarian theism holds, than on naturalism, where the fundamental level is wholly impersonal and third-personal; and modestly more expected than on unipersonal theism, which has an eternal I without an eternal You. The argument does not derive the Trinity from grammar. The doctrine comes from revelation; the argument shows that the shape of human speech and mind fits it. It is distinct from the [Argument from the One-and-the-Many Convergence](/codex/argument-from-the-one-and-the-many-convergence/), which concerns unity and plurality, and from the [Argument from the Narrative-Identity Convergence](/codex/argument-from-the-narrative-identity-convergence/), which concerns the self as a story. The conclusion is confirmatory. ## Format note This page is a **braided case**: a valid spine, each premise supported by evidence (the inductive strand), a comparison of rival explanations (the abductive strand) and agreement across fields (convergence), followed by a knot against double counting, a likelihood ledger and a defeater gate. Four fields are braided. **Language** supplies the universal of grammatical person and the special status of I and you. **Philosophy** supplies the case that first- and second-person points of view cannot be translated into third-person description. **Psychology** shows that human beings begin life in the I-you relation before they speak about anything else. **Theology** supplies a God whose own life is persons in address. Other arguments in this format are listed at [Ris3n Arguments](/codex/ris3n-arguments/). ## The spine | # | Premise | |---|---| | **P1** | **Personal grammar is universal.** All known languages grammatically distinguish speaker, addressee and others, and the speaker-addressee pair is structurally basic. | | **P2** | **Persons-in-address are irreducible.** The first-person and second-person standpoints cannot be reduced to third-person description without loss. | | **P3** | **Address comes first in development.** Human beings enter mental life through I-you exchange before they share attention to third things. | | **P4** | **The hypotheses.** A world in which irreducible persons-in-address are basic to language and mind is far more expected if the ground of being is persons in eternal address (Trinitarian theism) than if the ground is impersonal (naturalism), and somewhat more expected than if it is a single person (unipersonal theism). | | **P5** | **The likelihood principle.** Evidence far more expected on one hypothesis than another confirms the first over the second. | | **C** | **Therefore the person structure of language and mind confirms Trinitarian theism over naturalism, and modestly over unipersonal theism.** | **Validity.** P1 to P3 establish the datum: persons-in-address are universal in language, irreducible in philosophy and primary in development. P4 ranks how expected that datum is on each hypothesis. P5 converts the ranking into confirmation. The form is a comparative likelihood argument closed by modus ponens. **Strength of the conclusion.** Confirmatory and comparative. The argument does not prove the Trinity; it shows that the personal shape of human speech and thought is more at home in a world whose ground is tri-personal. ## P1, Personal grammar is universal ### Inductive strand 1. **Greenberg's universal.** Joseph Greenberg, "Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements" (in *Universals of Language*, 1963), stated as Universal 42: "All languages have pronominal categories involving at least three persons and two numbers." Later work has found a few languages whose pronouns do not mark number, but the three-way person distinction has held. 2. **A survey of over 700 languages.** Anna Siewierska, *Person* (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2004), compared person marking across more than 700 languages and treats person, the grammatical encoding of speaker, addressee and others, as a basic category of grammar. 3. **I and you are special; he is different.** Émile Benveniste, "Structure des relations de personne dans le verbe" (*Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris* 43, 1946; reprinted in *Problèmes de linguistique générale*, 1966), argued that "I" and "you" are persons in the full sense, defined by the act of speaking itself, while the third person is a "non-person," the one spoken about. Typology agrees that third-person forms are often borrowed from demonstratives ("that one"), unlike the first and second persons. ### Abductive strand | Explanation of P1's data | Explanatory power | Scope | Simplicity | Ad hoc? | |---|---|---|---|---| | Language is built around persons addressing persons | Explains universality and the privileged I-you pair | All languages | One posit | No | | Person marking simply mirrors the roles of a conversation | Explains the grammar well | All languages | Simple | No; it is true, and it relocates the question to why reality contains the I-you encounter at all | | Coincidence of independent inventions | Explains nothing | Weak | Simple | Yes | ### Convergence Typology (Greenberg, Siewierska) and structural linguistics (Benveniste) reach P1 independently. None of these linguists drew a theological conclusion. ### Objections and rebuttals 1. *"Some languages have no true third-person pronoun."* **Rebuttal.** Correct; some use demonstratives instead. That supports Benveniste's point: the third person is the "non-person," the one outside the exchange, while I and you are the fixed core. 2. *"Pirahã or other unusual languages break universals."* **Rebuttal.** Claims about particular languages are debated, but none removes the distinction between speaker and addressee, without which no conversation is possible. ## P2, Persons-in-address are irreducible ### Inductive strand 1. **The essential indexical.** John Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" (*Noûs* 13, 1979), described following a trail of spilled sugar around a supermarket, looking for the shopper making a mess, until he realized "I am making a mess." No third-person description of the shopper captured what he learned; only the first-person thought moved him to act. 2. **The view from nowhere leaves someone out.** Thomas Nagel, *The View from Nowhere* (1986), argued that an objective, third-person picture of the world, however complete, cannot contain the fact of being the particular subject who has that picture. See [Thomas Nagel](/codex/thomas-nagel/). 3. **Second-person reasons.** Stephen Darwall, *The Second-Person Standpoint* (Harvard, 2006), argued that moral obligation includes claims that persons address to one another, a "you must," which cannot be reduced to facts about states of the world. 4. **I-Thou and I-It.** Martin Buber, *I and Thou* (1923), distinguished two basic relations: I-It, in which a person treats what is before him as an object to be used or described, and I-Thou, in which he meets another as a "you." Buber held that real life is found in meeting, and that every particular "you" opens toward the eternal You. ### Abductive strand | Explanation of P2's data | Explanatory power | Scope | Simplicity | Ad hoc? | |---|---|---|---|---| | Persons and their address are real and irreducible | Explains Perry, Nagel, Darwall and Buber together | Mind, morality, language | One posit | No | | Indexicals are only a feature of how we represent things, not of reality | Explains the logic of "I" | Narrow | Simple | Leaves the subject who represents unexplained | | Eliminativism: there are no selves, only processes | Removes the datum | Wide | Simple | Must be asserted by someone, to someone | ### Convergence Philosophy of language (Perry), metaphysics (Nagel), moral philosophy (Darwall) and dialogical philosophy (Buber) arrive at P2 from different questions. Nagel and Darwall are not theists. ### Objections and rebuttals 1. *"Indexicals are just context-dependent words, like 'here' and 'now'."* **Rebuttal.** Their logic is context-dependent, but Perry's point is that the belief expressed by "I am making a mess" cannot be replaced by any third-person belief without losing its role in explaining action. That is a fact about minds, not merely about words. ## P3, Address comes first in development ### Inductive strand 1. **Protoconversation.** Colwyn Trevarthen, "Communication and cooperation in early infancy: A description of primary intersubjectivity" (in M. Bullowa, ed., *Before Speech*, Cambridge, 1979), described infants of around two months engaging in face-to-face exchanges with caregivers, with turn-taking of looks, smiles and sounds. 2. **Then a third thing.** Michael Tomasello, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne and Henrike Moll, "Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition" (*Behavioral and Brain Sciences* 28, 2005), argued that human infants develop shared intentionality over the first fourteen months, including joint attention, in which infant and adult attend together to a third thing. The developmental order is dyadic (I-you) first, then triadic (I-you about it). 3. **Language grows from address.** Children learn words inside shared attention with a "you" who names things for them. The third-person world of objects is learned from within the second-person relation. ### Abductive strand | Explanation of P3's data | Explanatory power | Scope | Simplicity | Ad hoc? | |---|---|---|---|---| | Human beings are made for persons first, things second | Explains the dyadic-then-triadic order | Development, language | One posit | No | | Social cognition evolved because cooperation paid | Explains its value | Wide | Simple | Explains the usefulness, not the irreducibility of P2 | ### Convergence Developmental psychology (Trevarthen), comparative cognition (Tomasello's work comparing children and apes) and the philosophy of language learning agree on P3. Some researchers debate how much infant protoconversation involves real understanding of the other, so the ledger treats the developmental strand as supporting, not decisive. ### Objections and rebuttals 1. *"Infant exchanges are reflexes, not encounters."* **Rebuttal.** The debate is real. But even the more cautious accounts place face-to-face exchange before joint attention to objects, which is the order the premise needs. ## P4, The hypotheses ### Inductive strand 1. **Naturalism's ground is third-personal.** On naturalism, the fundamental level of reality is fields and particles described entirely in third-person terms. Persons appear late, in a tiny region, and "I" and "you" are derivative. 2. **Trinitarian theism's ground is persons in address.** In Scripture the Father addresses the Son: "Jehovah said unto me, Thou art my son; This day have I begotten thee" ([Psalm 2:7](/codex/psalms-2-7/), ASV), and "Jehovah saith unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand" ([Psalm 110:1](/codex/psalms-110-1/), ASV). The Son addresses the Father about a glory shared "before the world was" ([John 17:5](/codex/john-17-5/), ASV) and a love given "before the foundation of the world" ([John 17:24](/codex/john-17-24/), ASV). At the baptism the Father speaks of the Son in the third person, "This is my beloved Son" ([Matthew 3:17](/codex/matthew-3-17/), ASV), while the Spirit descends. 3. **The early church read Scripture this way.** Matthew W. Bates, *The Birth of the Trinity* (Oxford, 2015), argues that early Christian writers used person-centred, or prosopological, exegesis, identifying the divine persons as speakers and addressees in Old Testament dialogues, and that this reading was essential to the emergence of Trinitarian doctrine. 4. **Unipersonal theism has an I without an eternal You.** A single divine person can address creatures, but before creation there is no one to address. Address is then not part of the divine life itself. See [Trinity Love-Overflow Argument](/codex/trinity-love-overflow-argument/) for the parallel point about love. ### Abductive strand | Hypothesis about the ground of being | Predicts irreducible persons? | Predicts address as basic? | Predicts the I-you-he structure? | |---|---|---|---| | Naturalism (impersonal ground) | No: persons are late and derivative | No | Only as a social tool | | Unipersonal theism | Yes | Only after creation | Partly: an I, then creatures as you | | Trinitarian theism | Yes | Yes, eternally | Yes: persons who speak, are spoken to, and are spoken of | ### Convergence Biblical theology (the Father-Son dialogues), the history of doctrine (Bates on prosopological exegesis) and the philosophy of persons (Buber's eternal You) meet at P4. ### Objections and rebuttals 1. *"'Let us make man' is a plural of majesty or the divine council, not the Trinity."* **Rebuttal.** Jewish and many Christian interpreters read [Genesis 1:26](/codex/genesis-1-26/) those ways, and the argument does not rest on that verse. It rests on the clearer New Testament dialogues between Father and Son and the Psalms the apostles read as such. See [Trinity OT Stack (Five Texts)](/codex/trinity-ot-stack-five-texts/). 2. *"The Trinity is three persons, not three grammatical persons."* **Rebuttal.** Agreed; the Father is not "first person" in a grammatical sense. The claim is structural: the divine life contains speaking, being spoken to, and being spoken of, which is the structure grammar universally encodes. ## P5, The likelihood principle ### Inductive strand The comparative principle is standard in science and confirmation theory. See [Bayesian Probability](/codex/bayesian-probability/). ### Abductive strand Its rival would forbid comparing hypotheses by their fit to evidence, which every party to the debate does. ### Convergence Bayesians and likelihoodists agree on this comparative use. ### Objections and rebuttals 1. *"Unipersonal theism might predict persons equally well."* **Rebuttal.** It predicts persons. It does not predict address as eternal. That is why the conclusion against unipersonal theism is stated as modest. ## The knot The strands are independent in method and history: linguistic typology (Greenberg, Siewierska), structural linguistics (Benveniste), analytic philosophy (Perry, Nagel, Darwall), dialogical philosophy (Buber), developmental psychology (Trevarthen, Tomasello) and the history of biblical interpretation (Bates). Two overlaps are counted once. First, Benveniste's I-you privilege and the developmental dyad-before-triad order describe the same structure from different angles, so the ledger treats them as related. Second, the irreducibility of the first person (Perry, Nagel) also supports the [Argument from Consciousness](/codex/argument-from-consciousness/) and [Argument from Personal Identity](/codex/argument-from-personal-identity/); across the codex it should be counted once. The distinctive datum here is the second person, address, which those arguments do not use. ## The ledger Prior-agnostic: the ledger asks only how expected each datum is under each hypothesis. The ratings are judgments argued above, not measurements. | Datum | How expected on Trinitarian theism | How expected on naturalism | Favours | Why | Independent? | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Person is a universal grammatical category | High | Moderate | Theism, slightly | Naturalism explains it as mirroring conversational roles | Yes | | I and you form a privileged pair; the third is the "non-person" (Benveniste) | High | Moderate | Theism, slightly | Same functional explanation applies | Partly overlaps the row above | | The first-person standpoint is irreducible (Perry, Nagel) | High | Low | Theism, clearly | Shared with arguments from consciousness; count once | Partly | | Second-person address is irreducible (Darwall, Buber) | High | Low | Theism, modestly to clearly | Naturalism's ground has no address in it | Yes, the distinctive row | | Infants begin in I-you exchange before triadic attention | High | Moderate | Theism, slightly | Evolutionary accounts predict early social bonding | Partly overlaps the I-you row | | Address as eternal, not only after creation | High on the Trinity | Not applicable | Trinity over unipersonal theism, modestly | Only a plurality of persons can have eternal address | Comparative | **Net.** Against naturalism the force comes from the irreducibility rows: if first- and second-person standpoints are real and basic, a wholly third-personal ground is a poor fit. The linguistic and developmental rows add only slightly, because naturalism can explain them functionally. Against unipersonal theism the advantage is modest, resting on the eternity of address. The argument contributes a distinct, second-person strand to the [Cumulative Case for Christian Theism](/codex/cumulative-case-for-christian-theism/). ## The defeater gate **The functional explanation.** The strongest objection is that grammatical person needs no deep explanation. Every conversation has a speaker and a hearer and usually a topic, so every language needs words for those roles. Benveniste and Siewierska explain person marking from the speech situation itself, and evolutionary accounts such as Tomasello's explain why humans, as intensely cooperative primates, evolved the motivation to share attention and talk. The I-you-he pattern is then a feature of communication between social animals, not a window on the ground of being. The reply has three parts. 1. **Grant it, and move to the real question.** The functional explanation is correct as far as it goes; the argument does not rest on grammar alone. The question is not why languages encode the speech situation, but what the speech situation is: an encounter of irreducible subjects (P2). Grammar is evidence that this encounter is universal and basic in human life, and that is all P1 claims. 2. **The functional story assumes what it cannot ground.** An evolutionary account explains why creatures who address each other were favoured. It does not explain how address, a "you must" or an "I am making a mess" that does not reduce to third-person facts, can exist at all in a world whose fundamental description is wholly third-personal. That is the gap the irreducibility arguments identify. 3. **A personal ground removes the gap.** If the ground of being is persons in address, then created persons addressing one another are not strangers in an impersonal cosmos; they are images of what is most basic. The functional story is then how the Creator built creatures able to share in that life. What the gate concedes: someone who rejects P2, holding that first- and second-person facts reduce to third-person ones after all, can accept the functional story and reject the argument. The argument's strength depends on the irreducibility arguments, which are serious but disputed. ## Concessions - *Grant:* grammar mirrors the roles of conversation. *Now collect:* then conversation, persons addressing persons, is universal in human life, and that is the datum. - *Grant:* evolution favoured cooperative creatures. *Now collect:* cooperation explains why address is useful, not how an irreducible "I" and "you" exist in an impersonal world. - *Grant:* [Genesis 1:26](/codex/genesis-1-26/) is disputed. *Now collect:* the Father-Son dialogues of the New Testament are not, and the early church read the Psalms in their light. - *Grant:* the Trinity is not learned from grammar. *Now collect:* the argument never claimed it was; it shows that the shape of our speech fits what revelation says. ## Cheatsheet **The 30-second version (read aloud).** Every language on earth has words for "I," "you," and "someone else." "I" and "you" are not just things; they are a speaker and someone spoken to. Babies trade smiles with their mothers at two months, long before they point at anything. Philosophers have shown you cannot turn "I" and "you" into a list of objects without losing something. If reality at bottom is impersonal, all that is a late accident. But Christianity says reality at bottom is the Father speaking to the Son, "Thou art my Son," and the Son answering the Father, with the Spirit between them. Then a world built around "I" and "you" is exactly what you would expect. **Fast facts:** 1. Greenberg (1963), Universal 42: all languages have at least three persons. 2. Benveniste (1946): I and you are persons; the third is the "non-person." 3. Perry (1979): "I am making a mess" cannot be replaced by any third-person description. 4. Trevarthen (1979) and Tomasello et al. (2005): I-you exchange comes before attention to third things. 5. Bates (2015): early Christians read the Old Testament as dialogues between divine persons. **The closing line.** We speak in persons because we were spoken into being by Persons. ## Cross-examination ### Round 1, Is "I" a thing? - **Q:** If you had a complete physical description of everyone in this room, would it tell you which one is you? - **If they say no:** then the first person is not captured by third-person description. Where does it fit in an impersonal world? - **If they say yes:** ask how a description picks out its own reader. ### Round 2, Is "you" a thing? - **Q:** When someone says "you owe me an apology," is that only a report about the world, or a claim made to you? - **If they say a claim to me:** then address is real. Can an impersonal cosmos contain claims? ### Round 3, Which God? - **Q:** Before creation, whom could a single divine person address? - **If they say no one:** then on that view address is not eternal. On the Trinity it is. ### Dodge table | Dodge | What it concedes | Reply | |---|---|---| | "Grammar just reflects conversation." | Conversation is universal | "Yes. I am asking what conversation is: persons meeting persons. What is that, in your world?" | | "Selves are an illusion." | Someone is under an illusion | "Then who is telling whom?" | | "Evolution made us social." | Address is useful | "Useful, yes. But how does a real 'you' exist in a world of only 'its'?" | | "Any god could explain persons." | Persons need a personal ground | "Persons, yes. Eternal address needs more than one Person." | ## Live-cite kit **Scripture (ASV):** - [Psalm 2:7](/codex/psalms-2-7/): I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou art my son; This day have I begotten thee. ([Psalm 2:7](/codex/psalms-2-7/), ASV) - [Psalm 110:1](/codex/psalms-110-1/): Jehovah saith unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, Until I make thine enemies thy footstool. ([Psalm 110:1](/codex/psalms-110-1/), ASV) - [John 17:5](/codex/john-17-5/): And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. ([John 17:5](/codex/john-17-5/), ASV) - [John 17:24](/codex/john-17-24/): for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. ([John 17:24](/codex/john-17-24/), ASV) - [Genesis 1:26](/codex/genesis-1-26/): And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ([Genesis 1:26](/codex/genesis-1-26/), ASV) - [Matthew 3:17](/codex/matthew-3-17/): and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. ([Matthew 3:17](/codex/matthew-3-17/), ASV) **Scholarly:** - Émile Benveniste (1946): the third person is the "non-person." - John Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical," *Noûs* 13 (1979). - Stephen Darwall, *The Second-Person Standpoint* (2006). - Martin Buber, *I and Thou* (1923). - Matthew W. Bates, *The Birth of the Trinity* (2015). **Aphorism:** "Before there was an it, there was a Thou." ## Connection to Scripture - [Psalm 2:7](/codex/psalms-2-7/) and [Hebrews 1:5](/codex/hebrews-1-5/), the Father addresses the Son, and Hebrews reads it as eternal sonship. - [Psalm 110:1](/codex/psalms-110-1/), one divine person speaks to another, among the Old Testament verses most often quoted in the New. - [John 17:5](/codex/john-17-5/) and [John 17:24](/codex/john-17-24/), the Son speaks to the Father of glory and love before the world. - [Matthew 3:17](/codex/matthew-3-17/), at the baptism the Father speaks, the Son is spoken of, and the Spirit descends. - [John 1:1](/codex/john-1-1/), the Word was with God: speech within God before creation. - [Genesis 1:26](/codex/genesis-1-26/), "Let us," read by Christians as divine deliberation and by others as majesty or council. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Matthew W. Bates, *The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament* (Oxford University Press, 2015). [doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198729563.001.0001](https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198729563.001.0001) - Emile Benveniste, *Problèmes de linguistique générale* (Gallimard, 1966). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12637205W) - Margaret Bullowa, *Before Speech* (1979). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8318772W) - Stephen Darwall, *The Second-Person Standpoint* (2006). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8297458W) - Thomas Nagel, *The View from Nowhere* (Oxford University Press, 1986). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2901921W) - John Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical," *Noûs* 13 (1979). [doi:10.2307/2214792](https://doi.org/10.2307/2214792) - Anna Siewierska, *Person* (Cambridge University Press, 2004). [doi:10.1017/cbo9780511812729](https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511812729) ## See also - [Arguments](/codex/arguments/), the master index - [Ris3n Arguments](/codex/ris3n-arguments/), the hub of ris3n's original arguments - [Argument from the One-and-the-Many Convergence](/codex/argument-from-the-one-and-the-many-convergence/), the Trinity and the problem of unity and plurality; this page is about address, not number - [Argument from the Narrative-Identity Convergence](/codex/argument-from-the-narrative-identity-convergence/), the self as a story; this page is about the self as speaker and addressee - [Argument from the Naming Convergence](/codex/argument-from-the-naming-convergence/) and [Argument from the Pre-Given Logos](/codex/argument-from-the-pre-given-logos/), other arguments from language - [Argument from the Demand to Be Witnessed](/codex/argument-from-the-demand-to-be-witnessed/), the need to be seen by a "you" - [Trinity](/codex/trinity/), [Social Trinitarianism](/codex/social-trinitarianism/) and [Trinity Love-Overflow Argument](/codex/trinity-love-overflow-argument/), the doctrine and a parallel argument from love - [Trinity OT Stack (Five Texts)](/codex/trinity-ot-stack-five-texts/), the Old Testament texts read as divine dialogue - [Argument from Personal Identity](/codex/argument-from-personal-identity/) and [Argument from Consciousness](/codex/argument-from-consciousness/), where the first person is also used - [Thomas Nagel](/codex/thomas-nagel/), whose view from nowhere grounds P2 - [Cumulative Case for Christian Theism](/codex/cumulative-case-for-christian-theism/), where this argument contributes ## Common questions this page answers **Q: Do all languages have first, second and third person?** Yes, as far as linguists know. Joseph Greenberg listed it as a universal of grammar in 1963, and Anna Siewierska's survey of over 700 languages treats person as a basic category. Some languages use words like "that one" instead of a true third-person pronoun, but all distinguish the speaker and the one spoken to. **Q: What does grammar have to do with the Trinity?** Grammar shows that human speech is built around persons addressing persons: an "I" speaking to a "you" about someone else. Christianity says the deepest reality is exactly that, the Father speaking to the Son with the Spirit between them. The argument says our grammar fits the Trinity, not that grammar proves it. **Q: What is the difference between I-Thou and I-It?** Martin Buber, in *I and Thou* (1923), distinguished treating someone as an object to be described or used (I-It) from meeting them as a person who addresses you and whom you address (I-Thou). He held that every real meeting with a "you" points toward the eternal You, God. **Q: Why can't the first person be reduced to the third person?** John Perry's example is a shopper following a trail of spilled sugar until he realizes, "I am making a mess." No description of "the shopper with the torn bag" captured that thought or explained why he stopped. Thomas Nagel argued likewise that a complete objective picture of the world leaves out the fact of being the one who has it. **Q: Do babies understand "you" before "it"?** Developmental research suggests babies engage in face-to-face exchanges of looks and sounds at around two months, and only later, over the first year, start sharing attention with an adult toward a third object. Researchers debate how much those early exchanges involve understanding, but the order, you before it, is widely accepted. **Q: Does "Let us make man" in [Genesis 1:26](/codex/genesis-1-26/) prove the Trinity?** Not on its own. Jewish and many Christian interpreters read it as a plural of majesty or as God addressing a heavenly council. The early church read it, along with the Psalms, as a dialogue among divine persons, and the clearer evidence comes from the New Testament, where the Father and the Son speak to each other.