From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: New words for gender neutral pronouns in English
Date: 26 Aug 92 10:53:16 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Aug24.025341.12877@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>In article <10476@spark.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
[_simile_]
>
>The statements are not all about age.  They are about <...>
>specific sentences and situations in which "they" has long been used, etc.  

Yes, that's right, specific sentences and situations.  It is rather
interesting, isn't it, that when people offer examples to show how
natural singular "they" sounds, the antecedent is most frequently a
"-body" pronoun or a noun phrase containing a quantifier such as
"every", "some", "any" or "no".  Could it be that singular "they"
sounds worse if it has to refer to exactly one person?

>Gendered words (the personal pronouns) were
>*almost always* used for identification of a person's sex.  That is, the
>gender-sex connection became far stronger in English than in other
>languages.

Not really.  Russian _on_, unlike English "he", can refer to a host of
inanimate objects, but it can't refer to a female being any more than
English "he".  In other words, if it has a definite antecedent, it
can't belong to the female sex.  So there is a clear connexion between
it and the male sex.  Yet it is, and always has been, the one and only
gender-neutral pronoun, and I'm not sure that its ability to serve as
such (that is, to refer to a person who may turn out to be a woman) is
conditioned by the fact that there are many masculine inanimate nouns.

As for "he" and "she" being used for sex identification, well, "they"
is used for number identification, isn't it?  There are versions of
English in which "them" is a plural marker.  The number-quantity
connexion is as strong as anything, and yet, as you see, if language
chooses to evolve in such a way as to violate it, it can do that.

>Nobody thinks of a penis when they hear "der Tisch" in German.

But many would think of a penis when they hear "der Penis".  :-)

>When we hear a gendered pronoun, we think of a person -- and
>have to loop back to see whether a male or just anyone was meant by "he."
><...>  And some other situations require
>it, too, as with "Who makes you their confidant?"   Answering "Jane" to
>the question "Who makes you his confidant?" is pretty weird to most
>English speakers.

Language is largely made of conventions; it is what its speakers make
of it.  If they were able to ignore the obvious plurality of "they",
then they could just as well have ignored the equally obvious
masculinity (and connexion to the male sex, as you said) of "he".  It
is fine by me if they didn't, I just mean that you won't be able to
prove that what happened was logically necessary, although I accept
that there were features of English which helped it.

>In fact, someone
>posted a long linguistic discussion of "they" just a few days ago.

It hasn't materialised here.

>>'Tis a very long time that I've been asking for such an explanation,
>>and the response was always an argument from political correctness.
>
>The OED, Evans and Evans, and a hundred other sources would ahve helped.

I didn't feel as if I needed any help.  I wasn't in trouble.  :-)

>So, as far as "natural state of affairs" goes, I'd say that the
>evolution of a language by its speakers over a millenium, give or take,
>is as natural as it gets.  

Certainly.  Come to that, the evolution over a century leads to the
same level of naturalness.

>>I'm <...> just a little annoyed by being told that grammarians
>>have invented (copied from Latin, whatever) something that evidently
>>has always been there.
>
>But it hasn't!  It went away until the Latinists tried to drag it back.  [1]
<...>
>>Can't the same argument from continuity be made for gender-neutral "he",
>>which is older than singular "they", and is also still with us?
>
>Right.  Both are in use.  (Which is the thing the "grammatically
>correct" can't stand.)  [2]
<...>
>>So gender-neutral "he" never
>>completely disappeared from English, even for a short time?
>
>No, not so far as I know.  [3]

Why do I feel that [2] and [3] contradict [1]?

>>>Why does this matter? Because the usual criticism of generic-singular
>>>"they" is that it is a modern coinage, brought about by "political
>>>correctness" or some such nonsense.
>
>>It is not nonsense, it is a legitimate impression, albeit probably an
>>incorrect one.  You see, that's what one encounters all the time.
>
>Really?  

Absolutely.  Beyond any doubt.  Just read the net for a while.

>>Those who would tell us that gender-neutral
>>"he" is unfair to women etc. often sound as though they have invented
>>singular "they". 
>
>Look, nobody's perfect.

Let's not think in all-or-none terms.  One doesn't have to be perfect
in order not to be <insert favourite derogative expression here>.
There are even people ("they"-users all of them) who would have the
community of speakers incorporate an artifact such as "E", "thon" or
something similar into the language.  How much do you think they care
for continuity?  (Yes, I know that lumping all of one's opponents
together isn't a sound strategy, but it may be that some of us have
the wrong allies.)

>> Hence the reaction of those of us who actively
>>dislike political correctness (or some of its incarnations).
>
>Alas, most of those who claim to disdain it. are also those who label
>the things they don't like, "PC."

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I have no serious
reason not to like singular "they" (I have absolutely no sympathy for
Latinists, and it is precisely the most exotic features of English
that I like the best), except that, by some unpleasant coincidence, it
_happens_ to be politically correct.  That, however, is a very
bothering circumstance, enough to keep me in the other camp.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK