List of figuresList of tablesPrefaceList of abbreviations1 Introduction1.1 Person as a grammatical category1.1.1 Person paradigms1.1.2 First and second persons vs third person1.2 The universality of person markers1.3 The nature of this book2 The typology of person forms2.1 Morpho-phonological form2.1.1 Independent forms2.1.2 Dependent person markers2.2 Syntactic function2.2.1 Syntactic function and morpho-phonological form2.2.2 The encoding of syntactic function2.3 Discourse function3 The structure of person paradigms3.1 Fewer than three persons3.2 Variation with respect to number3.2.1 More than one person and the inclusive/exclusive distinction3.2.2 Duals and larger numbers3.2.3 Number and the person hierarchy3.2.4 Towards a typology of paradigmatic structure3.3 Variation in gender3.3.1 Gender and the person hierarchy3.3.2 Gender and number3.3.3 Gender and the inclusive/exclusive distinction3.4 Differences between paradigms3.4.1 Independent w dependent paradigms3.4.2 Differences between dependent forms4 Person agreement4.1 Anaphoric pronoun vs person agreement marker4.2 The targets of person agreement4.2.1 Predicates4.2.2 Possessed nouns4.2.3 Adpositions and other targets4.3 The controllers of person agreement4.3.1 The person hierarchy4.3.2 The nominal hierarchy4.3.3 The animacy hierarchy4.3.4 The referential hierarchy4.3.5 The focus hierarchy4.4 The markers of person agreement4.4.1 Person agreement and morpho-phonological form4.4.2 The location of person markers5 The function of person forms5.1 Cognitive discourse analysis and referent accessibility5.2 Referent accessibility and the distribution of person forms in discourse5.2.1 Entity saliency5.2.2 Unity5.3 Accessibility and the intra-sentential distribution of person forms5.3.1 Chomsky's Binding Theory5.3.2 Referent accessibility and BT5.3.3 The avoid pronoun constraint5.4 Beyond referent accessibility5.4.1 Long-distance reflexives, logophoricity and point of view5.4.2 Person marker vs other referential expression and speaker empathy5.5 Person markers and impersonalization6 Person forms and social deixis6.1 Alternation in semantic categories6.1.1 Variation in number6.1.2 Variation in person6.1.3 The use of reflexives6.2 Special honorific person markers6.3 Omission of person markers7 Person forms in a diachronic perspective7.1 The sources of person markers7.1.1 Lexical sources7.1.2 Demonstratives7.1.3 Other person markers7.1.4 Conjugated verbal forms7.1.5 Other grammatical markers7.2 From independent person marker to syntactic agreement marker7.2.1 Three accounts of the early stages of the grammaticalization of person markers7.2.2 Syntactic agreement markers7.3 Language externally driven changes in person marking7.3.1 Borrowing of person markers7.3.2 Loss of person agreementAppendix 1. List of languages in the sample by macro-areaAppendix 2. Genetic classification of languages cited in the textReferencesAuthor indexLanguage indexSubject index