In English, for example, verbs like “walked” or “wrote” express the pastness of the action within the verb itself, but they do not reveal the “person,” which is instead indicated with an independent word like “you” or “we.” In Arabic, both tense and person are contained within the verb itself, so that a form like katabn means “we wrote.” But in Chinese, neither the pastness of the action nor the person is conveyed on the verb itself.
