1988 Volume 1988 Issue 94 Pages 25-49
The first person as speaking and the second as spoken to are morphologically marked and positive categories, whereas the third as unmarked and negative. The so-called third person affixes in the Turkic, Mongolian and Ainu languages are zero in nouns and also in verbs. Japanese, Korean, Chinese etc. have no category of person. Those which have been treated as the third person pronouns are diversed from demonstratives. Turkic -(s) i is not the third person suffix, but a definite ending, and -sin is not an imperative third person suffix, but an optative conjugational ending.