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## Singular de and its referential use in talk-in-interaction

Ehm Hjorth Miltersen, Aarhus University

E-mail: e.hjorth@hotmail.com

## Abstract

The Danish pronoun de and  its  inflections  are  traditionally  described  as  3 rd person plural, but, as this article demonstrates, it is also used as a gender neutral 3 rd person singular pronoun. As this pronoun - termed singular de - has not been documented or described in the literature thus far, the purpose of this article is to provide a grammatical description and analysis of singular de and its referential use in interaction. This is based on 104 occurrences of singular de in naturally occurring conversation. It is found that singular de is used with both generic and specific reference, and that interlocutors may use singular de to avoid indexing gender and orienting to it as a relevant topic in talk-ininteraction (gender-unspecified reference) or to index the referent's gender as neither male nor female (gender-specified reference). The article also  parallels between  singular de and  English  singular they ,  as  well  as  sociolinguistic variation in the use of singular de which could be topics for future studies.

Keywords: Personal pronouns, gender neutral pronouns, conversation analysis, reference, gender indexing

## 1. Introduction

Traditional accounts of pronouns typically define them as a closed word class; one  that  is  semantically  poor  and  rarely  subject  to  change.  However,  this description does not hold up when considering how speakers use pronouns in talk-in-interaction. The pronoun class do, in fact, change and expand. This discrepancy has been addressed by e.g.  Helmbrecht (2015) who points out that some of the major changes that pronouns tend to undergo have been overlooked in research. This paper is a study of one such phenomenon: Danish singular de . The Danish pronoun de and its inflections are traditionally considered 3 rd person plural, but in this paper I will demonstrate that the pronoun is also used with 3 rd person singular reference, which to my knowledge has not previously been described from a linguistic perspective. The paper will, through analyses of naturally occurring conversation reveal that speakers can use singular de to refer to different kinds of referents while leaving the gender of the referent unspecified,  in  some  cases  as  a  strategy  to  avoid  orienting  to  gender  as  a relevant topic. In other cases, singular de does index the gender of the referent as being of nonbinary gender, i.e. neither female nor male. As background for the analysis, section 2 outlines traditional views on pronouns in general and Danish pronouns in particular. The section also accounts for the concept of gender indexing in talk-in-interaction, introducing some principles from conversation  analysis.  These  principles  are  elaborated  in  the  3 rd section which details the method used in this paper. Section 4 accounts for the data that the analysis, which makes up sections 5 (grammatical overview) and 6 (referential use), is based on. In section 7, I propose a modified paradigm of Danish personal pronouns. The 8 th and final section of the paper discusses the results  and  implications  of  the  analysis,  including  sociolinguistic  variation, parallels to English singular they , and other phenomena in Danish pronouns. The findings of the paper suggest that the traditional view of pronouns as a closed and semantically poor class should be questioned.

## 2. Pronouns and reference

Pronouns are a relatively small and specialized word class, although they exhibit a large amount of cross-linguistic variation that makes them hard to clearly define as a class (Bhat 2004:1). Helmbrecht (2002:177) describe pronouns as organized in paradigms, standing in opposition to each other - they cannot be synonymous with each other and a speaker's choice of one pronoun over the other therefore has a semantic and/or pragmatic significance. Pronouns are commonly considered a closed class, (e.g. Wales 1996: 4), but phenomena such as Swedish hen (Sendén, Báck & Lindqvist 2015), the numerous Thai and Japanese pronouns (Panagiotidis 2002; Palakornkul 1975), and English neopronouns (Callaway 2019; Storoshenko 2019; Truong 2019) demonstrate that it is not exceedingly rare that new pronouns are introduced into languages. Simon and Wiese (2002:2) describe the pronouns class as 'a borderline case' between lexical  and  functional  categories:  like  lexical  words,  they  pick  out objects in the discourse, but like function words, they largely lack descriptive or semantic content. However, there is some evidence that pronouns are not necessarily semantically poor and may in some circumstances communicate information  about  their  referents'  identities  (Miltersen  2016).  Hansen  and Heltoft  (2011:180)  describe  the  most  important  function  of  pronouns  as enabling identification of the various referents that are being talked about. For personal pronouns, this can be speech participants (1 st and 2 nd person) or referents outside the speech situation (3 rd person). Pronouns may also have generic reference, where the referent of the pronoun, which may be 1 st ,  2 nd , or 3 rd person, is generalized and becomes representative of any person of a particular type:

'Characteristic of generic pronouns is that their referents are human and generalized: the descriptive reference may include the speaker, the addressee or some specific third party, but it always goes beyond that in an unspecified way (though the context of use often delimits the extension to some degree). The pronoun refers to a generalized person, and what is predicated about this referent is asserted to hold for every instantiation of the type. '

Jensen (2009:86)

1 st and 2 nd person pronouns serve to index the roles in the speech situation, i.e.  speaker  and  addressee  (Bhat  2004:6).  Consequently,  almost  all  of  the information  needed  to  identify  the  referent  is  in  the  morphosemantics  of the pronouns themselves. 1 3 rd person  pronouns, on the other hand, denote referents  not  necessarily  in  the  speech  situation  and  are  often  ambiguous with regards to reference, and it is necessary to draw on discourse-pragmatic strategies to correctly identify the referent. Knowledge about the context of the speech situation, including information about the potential referents, is important in order to narrow down the choice (Simon and Weise 2002:4). Stivers, Enfield, and Levison (2007) describe three preferences that speakers adhere to when using referential expressions in talk-in-interaction: recognition (the  addressee  must  be  able  to  identify  the  referent);  minimization  (using as  succinct  an  expression  as  possible);  and  association  (using  expressions that  convey  how  the  referent  is  related  to  the  participants  in  the  speech situation). In many languages, pronouns also play a salient role in negotiating social relations, which is particularly evident from phenomena such as T/V distinctions,  honorifics  and  other  politeness  distinctions  on  pronouns  (e.g. Brown  and  Gilman  1960;  Mühlhäusler  and  Harré  1990:CH6;  Panagiotidis 2002; Premawardhena 2002). These distinctions are not static, and speakers can and do modify their pronoun use in interaction in order to negotiate and communicate stance and identity (e.g. Simpson 1997; Premawardhena 2002; Raymond 2016; Conrod 2019). Considering how socially significant pronouns can be, the characterisation of them as semantically poor might be called into question: certainly, pronouns convey a great deal of social meaning. The impact of pronoun practices is evidenced by the fact that emotional distress can be caused  by  transgressions,  such  as  using  the  T-pronoun  when  the  recipient feels V is appropriate, or using incorrectly gendered pronouns (MacNamara, Glann, and Durlak 2017; Conrod 2019).

## 2.1. Third person pronouns in Danish

Having given an overview of pronouns in general, the focus is now shifted to how Danish pronouns, specifically, have been described. This section draws mainly on the most prominent grammar of Danish, Hansen and Heltoft's 2011 Grammatik over det Danske Sprog 'Grammar of the Danish Language' .

Hansen  and  Heltoft  (2011:181)  describe  the  semantics  of  pronouns  as denoting  the  'abstract  categories'  that  the  referents  belong  to,  giving  the example  that han 'he'  and hun 'she'  denotes  'persons'  that  are  (usually) respectively  male  and  female.  The  description  of  the  deictic  function  of pronouns matches the general description in the previous section.

Pronouns are the only words in Danish that are inflected for case (Hansen and Heltoft 2011:181). Only the singular 3rd person pronouns are inflected for gender: Grammatical gender in the case of den 'it (common gender)' and det 'it (neuter gender)' , and sexus (biological sex), in Hansen and Heltoft's terms, in the case of hun 'she' and han 'he' . Objects are typically referred to with den/ det while the gendered pronouns han/hun are reserved for humans 2 . 1st and 2nd person are not inflected for gender, but they control common gender on adjectives and take agreement as such. All personal pronouns control number, so that singular pronouns take singular agreement on adjectives and plural pronouns take plural agreement on adjectives (Hansen and Heltoft 2011:552). Danish has several options for  generic  reference.  One  pronoun  is  predominantly used with generic reference, man (oblique: en) (Jensen 2009:86; Hansen and Heltoft 2011:556, although see Bruun 2019) . Further, the pronouns vi (1PL), du (2SG) den (3SG common gender) and de (3PL, i.e. plural de ) can also be used generically (Jensen 2009:86). Hansen and Heltoft also mention generic du ('inclusive du ' in their terms, 2011:553). They also mention that traditionally, han is used generically 3 , and more recently han eller hun 'he or she' or simply hun , although they describe the latter strategy as 'very marked' (2011:555).

An overview of Danish pronouns as described in the literature is provided in Table 1.

|          |            | Nominative          | Oblique              | Possessive/ Genitive            | Reflexive                  |
|----------|------------|---------------------|----------------------|---------------------------------|----------------------------|
| singular | 1st person | jeg                 | mig                  | min / mit / mine                | mig selv                   |
|          | 2nd person | du De (polite) 4    | dig Dem (polite)     | din / dit / dine Deres (polite) | dig selv Dem selv (polite) |
|          | 3rd person | hun han den det man | hende ham den det én | hendes hans dens dets éns       | OBL + selv sig selv        |
| Plural   | 1st person | vi                  | os                   | Vores                           | os selv                    |
|          | 2nd person | I                   | jer                  | Jeres                           | jer selv                   |
|          | 3rd person | de                  | dem                  | Deres                           | dem selv                   |

Table 1: Traditional Danish pronoun paradigm.

## 2.2. Indexing gender

In  languages  such  as  Danish  and  English,  a  major  function  of  3 rd person pronouns is to index the gender of the referent. Gender in interaction has been the topic of many studies (see e.g Stokoe 2006), and of course pronouns are  not  the  only  tool  with  which  interlocutors  index  and  orient  to  gender. Ochs (1993)  differentiates  between  direct  and  indirect  indexing  of  gender, categorizing  gendered  pronouns  ( he,  she )  as  indirect  indexes.  Traditional accounts of pronouns, such as Hansen and Heltoft's (2011), have tended to assume that the choice between (binary) gendered pronouns is determined by the referent's 'natural' or 'biological' sex, and exclusively so. However, it is more accurate to say that speakers pick which pronoun to use based on the conceptual gender  of  the  referent,  i.e.  the  gender  the  speaker  perceives  the referent to be based on a number of social, pragmatic, and semantic factors (Ackerman 2019). Various studies have demonstrated that pronoun reference is  also  often  not  a  simple  binary  choice  between  female= she and male= he . Practices of pronoun play exist where speakers will refer to men with she or women with he ,  and transgender and/or nonbinary individuals who fit into neither category may be referred to with different pronouns altogether (cf. McConnel-Ginet  2013;  Conrod  2019).  Of  course,  individuals  themselves also do work in a wide variety of ways to influence how their own gender is perceived by others ('performing gender' , cf. Butler 1990), e.g. by actively communicating  which  pronouns  they  wish  to  be  referred  to  with  (chosen pronouns). The approach of analysing gender (reference) in terms of mallable concepts  rather  than  biological  constants  is  a  longstanding  tradition  in other fields of language study, including membership categorization analysis (MCA)  and  conversation  analysis  (CA)  (Stokoe  2006).  MCA  examines how  interlocutors  ('members')  assign  membership  of  different  categories to  themselves  and  others  in  interaction,  gender  being  one  such  collection of categories (see e.g. Schegloff 2007 and Stokoe 2006:471 for an overview). In  CA,  an  important  principle  is  for  the  analyst  to  only  assume  relevant for  the  participants  that  which  the  participants  themselves  demonstrate  as being  relevant.  In  other  words,  the  conversation  analyst  first  and  foremost bases their arguments and conclusions on what is demonstrable in the local context of the interaction under examination, striving to avoid bringing in any  assumptions  or  preconceptions.  Consequently,  'gender'  as  a  category is only of analytical relevance when the participants orient to gender, and it is the responsibility of the researcher to demonstrate whether and how this happens in the local context (Schegloff 1992; 1997). However, the notion of 'orienting to gender' locally is problematized by Stokoe and Smithson (2001), who,  among  other  points,  emphasize  the  need  for  researchers  to  draw  on cultural context in analysing the role of gender indexing in interaction. The authors question the notion that gender is only relevant when participants orient  to  it.  They  cite  Hopper  and  LeBaron  (1998:71),  who,  among  others, argue that gender is implicitly present in many parts of language, and that it would take effort on the part of a speaker to not index gender in their speech. As such, strategies speakers might employ to avoid orienting to gender (or avoid assigning gender membership to referents) can in itself be an interesting topic for analysis. Despite the limitations of CA as outlined by Stokoe and Smithson (2001), as well as later by Stokoe (2006), the authors still hold that CA can be a useful tool for gender and feminist studies, and I will employ it as such in the present paper. I argue that singular de is used as a device to avoid indexing and orienting to gender, which is otherwise inherently present in the Danish 3 rd person pronouns han and hun .  The next section will outline my method, including some other relevant principles of CA before proceeding to the analysis.

## 3. Method

The aim of this article is to provide a basic grammatical description of singular de and to analyse how it is used in various ways in talk-in-interaction. I first provide a brief overview of the grammar of singular de in the 'classical' sense; its  morphosyntax  and  semantics.  The  overview  is  brief  because  in  form, singular de is  largely  identical  to  plural de ,  and  I  will  focus  mainly  on  the differences  between  the  two.  What  truly  sets  singular de apart  from  plural de is  its  referential  usage  in  interaction.  In  my  analysis  of  this,  I  draw  on methodology and principles from interactional linguistics and conversation analysis. In CA, analysts are interested in how participants in conversations employ and orient towards linguistic resources. Of particular interest to the grammarian, repair is  a  resource  that  speakers  can  employ  when  'errors, violations, troubles' or other problems in the organization of the conversation occur (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974: 39). As Stivers and Robinson (2006) demonstrate, there is a preference for progressivity in conversation, meaning that participants generally strive to continue the interactional activity they are engaged in. Repair may hinder progressivity, particularly if it is other-initiated, as in that case an entire side-sequence may be necessary to resolve the trouble. On the other hand, trouble that is not repaired may itself hinder progressivity, for instance if it renders the recipient unable to understand the utterance. In that case, repair furthers progressivity (cf. Schegloff 1979). In general, there is also a preference for self-initiation of repair (Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks 1977:375). These different preferences must be balanced in talk-in-interaction when  potential  trouble  arises.  If  the  issue  is  so  severe  that  the  different participants'  understanding  of  the  discourse  cannot  be  aligned,  repair  is necessary. Specifically for this study, such trouble may be with identifying the correct referent for instances of singular de . If no repair occurs at a point after an instance of singular de where the turn-organization otherwise allows it to be initiated, it can be assumed that the participants can identify who is being talked about. In analysing the referential usage of singular de , I will therefore account for whether the participants conduct repair and whether they orient towards the same referents when singular de is used.

In accordance with CA principles, it is also assumed for the analysis that there  is  'order  at  all  points'  (Sacks  1984)  and  that  speakers'  choice  of  one word over another carry significance. It is also assumed that the context, both social and linguistic, in which a word or construction is uttered is crucial to the meaning and function of that word or construction. Consequently, I will treat the speakers' choice to use singular de as meaningful and examine the interactional goals they may achieve by doing so.

Examples in the analysis are transcribed according to the Jefferson system (Hepburn and Bolden 2013) and key lines are glossed loosely following Leipzig glossing rules 5 . The next section provides an overview of the data.

## 4. Data

The data for the analysis consists of naturally occurring language which was searched for instances of singular de .  104 such instances were found, which together constitute a collection (Hoey and Kendrick 2017). The majority of the data consists of video recorded conversations, supplemented by a single example from a chat message exchange via a private instant messaging client. As argued in Jørgensen (2017), this type of online textual interaction carries many similarities to 'face-to-face' conversation, and I am therefore categorizing it as naturally occurring conversational language on line with the video-audio data and analysing it at such for the purpose of this article.

The  video-audio  data  is  part  of  the  Danish  Talk-in-Interaction  project's (DanTIN)  database  AULing.  All  data  in  this  database  are  recordings  of naturally  occurring  conversation  (some  of  it  semi-elicited,  meaning  that the participants were given topics or material to discuss), collected with the participants'  informed  consent.  I  have  analysed  excerpts  from  five  videos, approximately 3 hours in total. Three of the videos (titled Groups 1-3) were recorded by myself as part of an elicitation exercise designed for this article (see 4.1).

Group  1  never  actually  produced  an  instance  of  singular de ,  but  the recording is kept in the data for comparison. Groups 2 and 3 both have examples of singular de , but Group 2 produced significantly more instances than Group 3, even after accounting for the longer duration of Group 2's recording and the fact there were four participants in Group 2 as opposed to three in Group 3. This may be due to the fact that the participants in Group 2 spoke noticeably quicker than those in Group 3, consequently simply producing more speech overall. But there may also be differences between speakers as to how and how frequently singular de is used, which could a topic for future studies.

Table 2: Video-audio data overview

| Name        | Duration   | Date recorded   |   Participants | Type                   |   Instances of singular de |
|-------------|------------|-----------------|----------------|------------------------|----------------------------|
| LE14        | 26m        | Mar. 2014       |              8 | Study group discussion |                          5 |
| venindesnak | 30m        | 2017            |              2 | Casual conversation    |                          1 |
| Group 1     | 35m        | Jan. 2020       |              3 | Elicited conversation  |                          0 |
| Group 2     | 1h         | Jan. 2020       |              4 | Elicited conversation  |                         79 |
| Group 3     | 35m        | Jan. 2020       |              3 | Elicited conversation  |                         15 |

## 4.1. Elicitation exercise

Part of the data are recordings of an elicitation exercise designed and conducted for the purpose of this article. The exercise aimed to elicit natural conversation that contained references to both generic and specific referents of unspecified gender, in order to facilitate opportunities to use singular de.. To achieve this, the participants were asked to discuss short stimulus stories. The procedure is detailed below.

The participants were given five slips of paper on each of which was written a different stimulus story and instructions for the exercise. Each story revolves around  one  or  more  characters,  who  are  never  referred  to  with  pronouns (except for the gender-unspecified reflexive sig (selv) ), and whose gender are not  otherwise  indicated.  One  exception  is  the  dressing  room  story,  where the character is explicitly stated to be of nonbinary gender. The number of characters is always clear and unambiguous, so that the participants would be prompted to discuss singular referents. The five stimulus stories can be found in Appendix A, each with a title for reference in this article (the titles were not present on the paper handed out to the participants). The five titles are: the coffee story; the supermarket story; the playground story; the dressing room story; and the baptism story. The instructions for the exercise are replicated here:

Læs historien herunder. Snak derefter om den i gruppen: Hvad er der sket? Hvem er aktørerne? Hvad kunne der ske efterfølgende? Er der et problem på spil, og hvordan kan det evt. løses?

English translation: Read the story below. Afterwards talk about it in your group: What has happened? Who are the actors? What could happen next? Is there a problem afoot, and how might it be solved?

The participants were told to discuss the stories and use the instructions as guidelines, but not worry too much about adhering to them strictly. This was done to ensure that the conversation elicited would be as natural as possible. Each group was given roughly 30 minutes in total to discuss all five stories. One group (Group 2) was given the additional task of discussing the party game Werewolf after they had completed the case story task. They were asked to explain the rules of the game to each other and discuss more generally how to play the game. The group spent an additional 30 minutes on this task. The other two groups did not receive this task due to time restrictions.

## 5. Grammatical overview of singular de

Before  the  referential  use  of  singular de is  analysed,  an  overview  of  its morphosyntax is given in this section. Morphologically, singular de and plural de are identical. The two are distinguished from each other by their syntactic surroundings and discursive context. Singular de is defined as referring to a singular referent, by coindexing with an antecedent or postcedent marked for singular (either on the NP itself or on a predicate), and/or by it being clear from the discursive context that its referent is a single person. (1) is an example of de being coindexed with the singular antecedent en eller anden ('someone or other'), which is also predicated by an adjective in singular form in a relative clause  ( der  er  homoseksuel 'who  is  homosexual')  (coindexing  marked  with subscript i, and relevant constituents marked with square brackets):

## (1) Group 3 | 23:30

elle:r [en eller anden] i der er homoseksuel å  synes det er rigtig or        one  or   another    REL  is  homosexual     and think   it   is   really træls   fordi de i bliver     mobbet upsetting because they become.PRS   bullied

```
'o:r someone who is homosexual and thinks it's really upsetting
```

because they are being bullied'

In some cases, the syntactic environment is such that the reference is ambiguous between singular and plural, but the discursive context makes it clear that it is an instance of singular de . Take for instance example (2):

```
(2) Group 2 | 41:25 de i kunne sån være (0.2) rigtig seje    å (.) lave deres i e:get they could  such  be            really   tough.PL  and     make  their    own
```

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

```
kort↗ card 'they could like be (0.2) really cool and (.) make their o:wn card'
```

From the example alone, there is no sign that the referent here is a singular person. The only deictic elements are de and deres with no nearby antecedent, and de is even predicated by an adjective marked for plural ( seje ) (cf. section 5.1). In terms of form, this instance of de behaves entirely as a plural pronoun. The context of the utterance, however, makes it clear that the referent is singular: Group 2 is  discussing  the  baptism  story  and  have  just  finished  addressing what difficulties  there  might  be  in  finding  a  sufficiently  varied  selection  of greeting  cards.  Immediately  before  the  excerpt,  they  are  reorienting  to  the instructions  for  the  experiment:  One  of  the  participants  reads  aloud hvad kunne der ske efterfølgende ('what could happen afterwards'). Then another participant repeats hvad kunne der ske efterfølgende and produces (2). Since the  group's  earlier  discussion  of  the  story  has  revolved  around  the  (single) main  character's  behaviour  and  motivations,  and  they  are  now  returning to talk about specifically what is transpiring in the story, the only coherent referent for de in (2) is that main character, thereby making it an instance of singular de .

Having presented some examples of singular de and accounted for how it can be distinguished from plural de in context, a full overview of the pronoun's case inflections, with examples from data, is given in Table 3.

| Form                                                                                                                                                         | Example                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| de [ d̥i ]                                                                                                                                                   | Nominative jaer å så kan man lige aftale med en eller anden at de (.) henter den for en sån at man ikke skal op af trappen ↘ 'yeah and then you can make a deal with someone that they (.) will get it for you so that you don't have to go up the stairs' (Group 3, 15:05) |
| ] dem på >en eller anden< måde '*eh* alternatively it could be saying that it was whoever served them the coffee (0.5) if they have distracted them somehow' | Oblique dem [d̥em                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |

Table 3: Case paradigm.

| Poss./Gen.   | deres [ d̥æ ʌs ]                                    | det også- det deres job (0.5) de (.) de gårdvagt 'it's also- it's their job (0.5) they (.) they're on playground duty' (Group 2, 28:10)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
|--------------|-----------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Reflexive    | sig selv [ sa i ˈsæl ʔ ] / dem selv [ d̥em ˈsæl ʔ ] | (...) hvor de står og s- khælder kogende kaffe ud over sig selv for det gør pænt nas ↘ '(...) where they are standing and s- kpouring boiling coffee over [REFL] because that stings pretty bad' (Group 2 3:29) førsteprioriteten må være å skynde sig hen ti:l en vask hh øh: å så ka v- så må de så overveje med dem selv om de har lyst til å få en ny kop kaffe eller at de er vågen ri:geligt ↘ 'first priority must be to hurry to: a sink hh uh: then can v- then they must consider with [REFL] if they want to get a new cup of coffee or if they're ple:nty awake' (Group 2, 4:00) |

## 5.1. Adjectival agreement

The data contains examples of de predicated by adjectives, and these adjectives occur both in singular and plural form. The two following examples are from the  same  conversation  and  illustrates  both  cases,  (3)  being  an  example  of singular agreement and (4) an example of plural agreement:

(3) Group 2 | 19:27 01   *DAN: jeg har sån en go to strategi hvis jeg er varulv→ I have like a go to strategy if I am werewolf 02   *DAN: det    sån ∙hh hvis en person (0.2) anklager en eller it's like hh if a person (0.2) accuses someone or anden→ other 03   *ALF: jaer↘= yeah 04   *DAN: = for et eller andet (0.3) ø:hm så: slå den = for something or other (0.3) u:hm the:n kill that person ihjel som de person that they 05 → *DAN: anklagede (.)   hvis det     er   du du     du ved accuse. PST if     it   is   you  you you  know de er god altså   [hvis they. SG be.PRS  good   PRT    if accused (.) if it is you you you know they are good

- that   is if=

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

06   *BOB: [hm 07   *DAN: [en god person anklager en anden god person for et eller andet→ a good person accuses another good person for something   or other (4) Group 2 | 34:36 01   *CAL: vi had- vi had- vi havde en øh: der øh: der ikke ville gøre det fordi we had- we had- we had one uh: who uh: who did not want   to do it       because 02 → *CAL:    at øh: de øh:     som-   som   også   sagde at      de CONJ   they.SG   REL  REL also  say.PST CONJ  they.SG var utilpasse be.PST uncomfortable.PL that uh: they: uh: who- who also said that they were

uncomfortable

Atypical  agreement  in  subject  predicates  has  been  attested  in  Danish  for agreement  with  prepositional  objects  (Jensen  2004;  Engberg-Pedersen  and Poulsen 2010, Christensen and Nyvad 2019). A singular subject and a plural object compete for agreement on the adjective, such as in (5) (adapted from Christensen & Nyvad 2019:167 example 6c):

- (5) Jeg nåede at     have  to,  men  jeg var ikke gode ved  dem, så  de I    reach.PST    INF  have  two  but    I       was  not   good.PL   PP    them   so  they blev ikke   så gamle.

become.PST not     so     old.PL

'I had two in that time, but I was not good to them, so they did not grow very old'

Christensen and Nyvad (2019:170) hypothesize that the phenomenon may be  a  case  of  trigger-happy  agreement  as  described  by  Comrie  (2003:319) where more than one NP can control agreement, depending on syntactic and pragmatic properties.

While  a  similar  'battle'  is  going  on  at  the  surface  (singular  or  plural agreement),  the  situation  for  singular de is  a  little  different.  Here,  there  is only one candidate for agreement controller, de ,  the  issue  rather being that the form itself is ambiguous between singular de and plural de . Whether the result is singular or plural agreement depends on a balancing of syntactic and pragmatic/discursive factors.

Examples like (3) and (4) are scattered throughout the video data, neither one  nor  the  other  being  overwhelmingly  more  frequent:  There  are  four instances of plural agreement, three instances of singular agreement, and two instances where the plural and singular form of the adjective are homophones. The participants never treat either form as more marked than the other, and the presence of plural agreement does not seem to have consequences for their ability to identify the referent or comprehend the utterance. If singular de is a relatively new phenomenon, the fact that neither form is dominant may be due to singular de having yet to stabilize as a lexeme with its own number specification separate from plural de .

## 6. Referential usage

Having given an overview of the grammatical form and behaviour of singular de , I now turn to examining the way singular de is used in talk-in-interaction. I  argue that singular de can  be  used  referentially  in,  broadly  defined,  three ways. Rather than this division being a strict taxonomy, it should be seen as a tool to provide an overview of and characterize the way in which singular de is used in interaction. For the present purpose, the different uses of singular de are defined in terms of the kind of referents they refer to. Namely, referents that are:

1. Generic gender-unspecified,
2. specific gender-unspecified, or
3. specific gender-specified.

Of these, 1) has generic reference, while 2) and 3) have deictic reference, i.e. singular de in  these  cases  refers  to  concrete  referents  in  the  discourse.  By 'gender-unspecified' , it is meant that the pronoun does not index the gender of  the  referent,  whereas  'gender-specified'  use  of  singular de indexes  the referent's gender as specifically gender neutral or nonbinary. The next sections will further explain and give examples of the three referential uses, showing how speakers use them to archieve interactional goals. Specifically, I argue that singular de is used by speakers both to orient to gender and to avoid doing so, in the latter case to downplay the relevance and importance of gender, and/ or to maintain discretion and anonymity.

## 6.1. Generic gender-unspecified referent

As mentioned in section 2, plural de can have generic use in Danish (Jensen 2009:4), similarly to plural they in English and plural ze in Dutch (de Hoop & Tarenskeen 2015:164). However, generic plural de would be used for generic referents that are plural or at least unspecified for number, while the examples from  my  data  feature  referents  that  are  unambiguously  singular.  These referents can be seen as hypothetical persons that are thought up to illustrate a point or represent a more abstract category of referents. To fit that purpose, they are unspecified for any feature or semantic content that is not necessary to make the point in question. An example is seen in (6), which is from a study group discussion with eight participants. The group is discussing ethics in the workplace, specifically the issue of confidentiality between a hairdresser and customer:

## (6) LE14 | 9:50

```
01   *H: asså (.) >det handler jo< om relationen mellem kunde å å å frisør well (.) it's about the relation between customer and and and customer 02   *H: (.) om man vælger å prøve å (1.1) lære så meget om kunden som muligt if one chooses to try and (1.1) learn as much about the customer as possible 03   *H: at det er kunden der skal snakke eller (0.2) *å-* altså that it is the customer who shall talk or (0.2) a-   well 04 → *H:  komme til at kend[e dem     eller om man lader come    PP  INF  know   them.SG or PP   one lets kunden komme til  at customer.DEF    come    PP   INF get to know them or if one lets the customer get to 05   *E: [ah (.) mm 06   *H: kende sig selv→ know themself 07   *E: hm↘ 08   *H: hh fordi i virkeligheden kan man komme til å fortælle (0.2) ret hh because in reality one can accidentally tell (0.2) quite 09   *H: mange ting (.) ti:l en frisør so:m man egentlig ikke kender→ many things (.) to: a hairdresser tha:t one really doesn't know 10   *H: asså→ I mean 11   *E: hm↘ 12   *C: jaer [(nej)↘ yeah no 13   *H:        [hvor man føler at man overhovedet ikke ved noget om deres liv↘ where one feels that one doesn't know anything at all about their life
```

In line 01, H is saying that the core concern is 'the relation between customer and  hairdresser' .  The  bare  nouns kunde and frisør ,  devoid  of  any  (in)

definiteness markers, suggest that H is referring to the (generic) categories of customer and hairdresser, rather than any specific customer or hairdresser (cf. Hansen and Heltoft 2011:473). Based on this, it could be argued that the referents are not truly singular, as referring to a category of people may be semantically more similar to referring to multiple people than referring to a single person. However, H uses singular markers to describe the referents: the singular definiteness suffix -en (lines 02-04), and the singular article en (line  09).  Morphosyntactically, H treats the referents as singular, and these instances  of de are  therefore  interpretable  as  singular de .  The  referents  are imagined,  exemplifying  entities,  and  thereby  generic,  and  H  uses  genderunspecified singular de to emphasize this genericity.

Initially, in line 02, H refers to the hairdresser with the pronoun man , and to the customer with singular de . In H's next turn in line 08, this reference strategy is reversed, and H now refers to the hairdresser with de and to the customer with man .  As both are referred to with man ,  they must both play a generic role in this discourse. Consequently, since de as well is used to refer to both persons, de must also be able to denote generic referents in a similar fashion as man . Note that referential scopes of the two pronouns are not identical: where man can  be  taken to include the speaker, de cannot. By switching between man and de , H is able provide a more nuanced account of the (hypothetical) situation,  where  the  perspectives  of  both  customer  and  hairdresser  are presented. First H takes the perspective of the hairdresser interacting with the customer, describing possible strategies that the hairdresser could employ in managing the relation (namely whether the hairdresser should 'get to know' the customer or help the customer gain self-insight ( lader kunden komme til at kende sig selv 'let the customer get to know themself')). Afterwards, H takes on the perspective of the customer, saying that a customer risks oversharing and may feel that the relation is unequal ( hvor man føler at man overhovedet ikke ved noget om deres liv 'where one feels that one does not at all know anything about  their  life').  Whoever  functions  as  the  point-of-view  of  H's  telling  is referred to with man , and the other is referred to with de , while both remain generic referents.

## 6.2. Specific gender-unspecified referent

Singular de can also refer to specific referents that for one reason or other are unspecified for gender. This section will examine examples with referents that are 1) fictional, 2) real and unknown to the speaker, and 3) real and known to  the  speaker.  These  three  uses  are  grouped  together  as  they  linguistically are treated the same - as specific referents - but they point to quite different kinds of entities in the real world in terms of what knowledge the speakers have access to. For the fictional referent in the first example, the speakers have very little knowledge about the person - and in fact, there exists no knowledge about e.g. the gender, as it is not specified or described anywhere. In the second example, the referent is a real person and therefore knowledge about e.g. their gender does exist, but the speaker has not been privy to that information and therefore does not have access to it. In the third pair of examples, the referent is  also  real,  and  here  the  speaker  does  have  knowledge about the referent's identity,  including  gender,  but  chooses  not  to  draw  on  that  information and leaves it unspecified by using singular de . These three uses are analysed more closely in turn below, where it is also demonstrated that they allow the speakers to achieve different interactional goals: In the cases where the speaker has insufficient knowledge about the referent (fictional, real and unknown), the speaker can use singular de to avoid indexing gender and thereby avoid making an epistemic claim that cannot be justified. Where the speaker does have knowledge about the referent's gender (real and known), the speaker can choose to use gender-unspecified singular de and avoid indexing gender in order to downplay the importance of gender or to emphasize the anonymity of the referent.

## 6.2.1. Fictional

In (7), Group 2 are discussing the first case story in the exercise. DAN has read the coffee story aloud and proceeds to address the instructions in line 08, initiating a discussion of what has happened in the story:

| (7) 01   | Group 2 | *DAN:   | 1:20 okay (.) ø:hm: (.) å så de:r >nogen ting vi skal snakke om< så hva- okay (.) u:hm (.) and then the:re's some things we should talk about so wha-   |
|----------|------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 02       | *DAN:                  | HVA der sket↘ WHAT has happened                                                                                                                         |
| 03 04    | *DAN:                  | (0.3) ø:h→ u:h                                                                                                                                          |
| 05 06    | → *CAL:                | (0.2) de har skyndet sig virkelig meget for å: 3SG have hurry.PST REFL truly much PP INF                                                                |
| 07       | *CAL:                  | they have hurried a whole lot to: prøve å komme [hen til deres undervisning try INF come ADV PP 3SG.POSS teaching til tiden↘ PP time.DEF                |

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen

Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

```
08   *BOB: [phh 09   *BOB: *e:*e:j det kunne også bare være du ved den de:r (.) den typiske a:h it could also just be you know tha:t (.) the typical 10   *BOB: morgen du ved hvor du ba:re sån rigtig træt du ved å [*så:*→ morning you know where you j:ust like really tired you know and then 11   *DAN: [ja:↘ yes
```

After a few pauses and an uhm from DAN, CAL gives his account of what has happened in the case story in line 06: de har skyndet sig virkelig meget for å: prøve å komme hen til deres undervisning til tiden ('they have hurried a whole lot to try and get to their class on time'). CAL refers explicitly to the character in the story, denoting the person with singular de . As the character is fictional and the story does not specify a gender, there is nothing that can indicate which pronoun is appropriate to use. Therefore, CAL can use singular de to avoid taking a stance on or guessing at which gender the person might be, information that is both unknown and irrelevant to the story at hand.

## 6.2.2. Real, unknown to speaker

In the study group data, participant H relays a story originally told by someone else.  A  hairdresser  informant  has  been  talking  to  H  about  confidentiality between her and her customers, and immediately before the excerpt in (8), H has described how a client has told the hairdresser about a mental health issue:

```
(8) LE14 | 11:20 01   *H: fordi (.) nogen gange så kan det være rigtig sv æ rt at snakke om because (.) sometimes then it can be really hard to talk about 02   *H: personlige (0.2) ting (.) med mennesker man kender↗ personal (0.2) things (.) with people you know 03   *H: nogen gange kan det være en utrolig lettelse at fort æ lle [det til sometimes it can be an incredible relief to tell it to 04   *B: [jaer yeah 05   *H: nogen som man ikke kender [rigtigt↘ someone who you don't know really 06   *B: [mm 07 (0.3) 08   *H: å altså (.) som hun selv sagde >hvem skulle hun< sige det til hun kendte and well (.) like she said herself who should she tell it to she didn't know
```

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen

Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

```
09   *H: jo ikke (0.5)[klientens familie å: asså: å hun- hun var altid sådan øhm (0.5) the client's family and well: and she- she was always like uhm 10 (0.7) 11   *H: altså well 12 → *H: hun anonymiserede dem i  bedste se a stil hun sagde 3SG  anonymise.PST     3SG   PP best      C   A style 3SG  said bare (0.2) en af just          one PP she anonymised them in the best CA fashion she just said (0.2) one of my 13   *H: mine klienter (.) jeg havde  den her oplevelse(.) asså my    client.PL        1SG  have.PST it   here  experience       PRT clients (.) I had this experience (.) I mean 14 (0.2) 15   *H: det var aldrig sådan hun udstillede [dem   det var it   was   never    such   3SG   expose.PST    3SG     it   be.PST hun meget omhyggelig med→ 3SG  very    careful PP it was never like she exposed them she was very careful about that 16   *A: [jaer (.) lige præcis↘ yeah (.) exactly
```

The  hairdresser's  story  involves  one  of  her  clients  sharing  some  sensitive information about the client's mental health with her. In line 18, H points out that  the  hairdresser  competently  kept  her  client  anonymous  ( hun anonymiserede dem i bedste CA stil 'she anonymized them in best CA fashion'). Doing this, H refers to the client with singular de . In contrast, H refers to the hairdresser with hun 'she' .  In  other  words,  it  is  not  the  case  that  H  avoids  orienting  to gender entirely, but rather indexes gender in the hairdresser but not in the client.  This  could  be  due  to  H  not  knowing  the  gender of the referent (i.e. the hairdresser did not reveal this information), in which case H is avoiding indexing the referent's  gender  for  the  same  reason  as  CAL  did  in  example (7). On the other hand, it might be that H does know the client's gender, but chooses to leave it unspecified here. H might be doing this to avoid orienting to gender in order to downplay its importance - however, the fact that H does index the hairdresser's gender with hun suggests otherwise. Alternatively, H may be using singular de about the client to emphasize the client's anonymity. Not only is H relaying sensitive personal information about this person, but unlike the hairdresser, the client may not have given consent to or even have knowledge of the fact that they are being discussed as part of an academic study. By keeping the client as underspecified as possible, H can distance them as a person from the discourse and keep focus on the topic of confidentiality between hairdresser and customer. 6

## 6.2.3. Real, known to speaker

While in (8), the speaker (likely) did not know the referent nor many details about  them,  the  speakers  in  the  next  examples  are  aware  of  precisely  who the  referent  is  and  presumably  of  their  gender,  but  still  refer  to  them  with unspecified singular de .  In  the  first  example  (9),  two  friends are discussing who will be attending a board game event the following day:

## (9) venindesnak | 22:55

| 01   | *ADA:   | ø:hm: (.) indtil jeg jo selvfølgelig kom i tanke om der er u:hm: (.) until I of course remembered that there is               |
|------|---------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 02   | *ADA:   | spilaften i mo:rgen→ board game night tomorrow                                                                                |
| 03   | *ADA:   | (0.9)                                                                                                                         |
| 04   | *BEA:   | *j[a*↘ yes                                                                                                                    |
| 05   | *ADA:   | [>og så kom jeg< til å tjekke begivenheden↘ and then I accidentally checked the event                                         |
| 06   | *ADA:   | (1.4)                                                                                                                         |
| 07 → | *ADA:   | °åghh så der nogen der har trykket de måske ugh then there someone REL have pressed 3SG maybe kommer (.) åghh °↘ come.PRS ugh |
| 08   | *ADA:   | come ughh (1.2)                                                                                                               |
| 09   | *BEA:   | fuck det↘ fuck that                                                                                                           |
| 10   | *ADA:   | åghh↘ ughh                                                                                                                    |
| 11   | *BEA:   | fuck dem↘ fuck them                                                                                                           |
| 12   | *ADA:   | jaer↘ yeah                                                                                                                    |
| 13   | *ADA:   | (1.4)                                                                                                                         |
| 14 → | *ADA:   | øh: de ikke i flertal↘ uh 3SG not PP plural uh: they isn't plural                                                             |
| 15   | *ADA:   | de(t) er nummer et↘ it's number one                                                                                           |
| 16   | *ADA:   | (0.6)                                                                                                                         |
| 17   | *BEA:   | ↑hm↘                                                                                                                          |
| 18   | *ADA:   | *det er kun en*↘ it's just one                                                                                                |
| 19   | *ADA:   | (0.8)                                                                                                                         |

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen

Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

|   20 | *BEA:   | jaer (.) fint↘ yeah (.) fine                                                                                                   |
|------|---------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|   21 | *ADA:   | jaer og det kan jeg også bedre håndtere (.) ↑og sti:ne kommer i yeah and I can better handle that too (.) and sti:ne will come |
|   22 |         | morgen og det bliver godt↘ tomorrow and it will be good                                                                        |
|   23 | *BEA:   | ↑nå ja for fanden hun skal også med til spilaften↘ oh right hell she is also going to board game night                         |

In line 05, ADA says that she looked at the social media page for the board game night, using the phrasing kom til (lit. 'came to'), indicating that ideally, she  should  not  have  done  it.  This  is  followed  by  a  relatively  long  pause of  1.4  seconds  -  this,  together  with  the kom til phrasing,  could  signal  that ADA is about to talk about something bad or problematic 7 .  This  is  further supported by the groans surrounding ADA's utterance in line 07, where says that nogen 'somebody'(which can be interpreted as either singular or plural) has  indicated  on  social  media  that  'they  may  attend'  the  event  ( de  måske kommer ).  Since  ADA has seen this on the social media page for the event, she has presumably been able to see the identity of the person there as well. The negative framing of the utterance could indicate that she is unhappy with the fact that this person may or may not show up. This suggests that ADA has enough knowledge about this person to know which pronoun they are normally referred to with, which could be de , but could also be han or hun . But  the  way  the  person  is  also  indexed  with nogen rather  than  mentioned by  name  suggests  that  they  are  in  fact  underspecified  here.  Following  this utterance is another long pause (1.2 seconds), where ADA could elaborate (e.g. specifying who de refers to) - the fact that BEA does not take the turn here indicates that the story is potentially pragmatically incomplete and BEA could be waiting for a continuation or clarification. No such thing is provided, and BEA then addresses the information as given and aligns with ADA 's negative judgement, saying 'fuck that' and then 'fuck them' , following ADA 's choice of pronoun. To the outside observer, at this point it is still ambiguous whether BEA has correctly identified the referent of de - the long pause in 08 could also indicate that BEA is having trouble doing so. In fact, this may also be ambiguous to ADA, as she, once the alignment sequence in 09-12 is complete, initiates self-repair in order to disambiguate the referent. She specifies that de indeed refers to only one person, saying øh: de ikke i flertal ('uh they [COP] not plural'). BEA accepts ADA 's repair at face value with ↑ hm ↘ in line 17 and jaer (.) fint ↘ in line 20. ADA 's utterance in line 21 then further disambiguates and also addresses the trouble at hand. ADA says that she 'can better handle that' ( det kan jeg også bedre håndtere ), in contrast to it being harder to handle not knowing whether several people will attend or not.

This is the only example of a speaker repairing an utterance containing singular de present in my data (and it is worth noting that it is not initiated by  the  person  who  does  not  already  know  the  identity  of  the  referent,  the recipient).  Here,  the  use  of  singular de as  opposed  to  an  unambiguously singular pronoun hinders the conversation from progressing, requiring long pauses and a repair sequence, so what might ADA gain from using singular de anyway?  As  in  the  previous  example,  the  purpose  here  may  be  to  keep the referent as anonymous as possible. Since ADA 's negative framing of the utterance in 07 indicates that she might be upset with this person, keeping their identity hidden from BEA may be a way to prevent conflict if all three (ADA, BEA, and the anonymous person) are part of the same social circle and BEA might be able to identify them and also become upset with them on ADA's behalf. Using a gender-specific pronoun would narrow down the list of possible referents. ADA could have specified the identity of the referent in line 08, but did not, and the use of singular de here may be a way to further indicate that she will not reveal who the person is.

Another  example  of  using  singular de about  a  known  referent  is  (10), where Group 2 is discussing the playground story. This prompts CAL to share a story from his own school days:

```
(10) Group 2 | 26:35 01   *CAL: men på den anden side det er ude i gården fordi det en gårdvagt så but on the other hand it is in the yard because it is a yard guard so 02 det nok ikke fordi at de:r ikke er [(       ) it's probably not because the:re is not [unintelligible] 03   *BOB: [n å ja en g å rdvagt det var oh yeah a yard guard that was 04 en ting ja↘ a thing yes 05   *CAL: ja→ yes 06   *CAL: det er det sikkert stadig↘ it probably still is 07   *ALF: det tror jeg↘ I think so 08   *BOB: det lyder plausibelt→ it sounds plausible 09   *CAL: altså det havde vi da brug for der var da folk der kom meget til well we needed that because there were people who got very
```

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen

Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

```
10 skade bare hhfordi de var idioter hurt just hhbecause they were idiots 11 → *CAL: vi havde nogen der faldt ned fra en container og rev 1PL had    someone REL  fell    down from  a   container   and tear.PST deres øh: pung op↘ 3SG         pouch up we had someone who fell down from a container and tore open their uh: pouch 12 (0.8) 13   *CAL: *det var ikke så [godt*↘ that was not so good 14   *BOB: [<så må man jo hellere kh ø be en ny en>↘ then you better buy a new one 15   *BOB: hh 16   *ALF: he↗ 17   *CAL: lad os bare sige at det var ikke særligt k ø nt sån at kunne se sån en let us just say that it was not very pretty like being able to see like a 18 lille (0.2) <klump> der li:ge l å å var blodig nede på jorden ved little (0.2) lump that ju:st lay and was bloody down on the ground 19 siden af dem↘ next to them
```

When the transcript starts, the group has just remembered that one of the characters in the stimulus story is a teacher on playground duty ( gårdvagt 'yard guard'). In line 06, CAL makes the claim that playground duty is probably still something that is practiced in schools, which ALF and BOB agree with in the next two lines. Then CAL initiates his story by saying that surely 'we [he and his childhood classmates] needed that' ( det havde vi da brug for ), backing up this claim by telling a story about a pupil, referred to with singular de. CAL relays that the pupil fell off a shipping container and ' rev deres pung op' 'ripped open their [genital] pouch' . This is met with 0.8 seconds of silence, which could be due to the sensitive nature of the topic introduced (genital injury), or perhaps indicate  that  the  other  participants  are  having  trouble  disambiguating  the word pung , which can mean either genital pouch or wallet. CAL then makes an assessment of his own story * det var ikke så godt * 'that wasn't so good' . This is said in a softer voice, which again could indicate the sensitivity of the topic. Before CAL has finished his utterance, BOB makes a joke on the ambiguity of pung , commenting that 'then you better buy a new one' ( så må man jo hellere købe en ny en ). This elicits some laughing, but CAL promptly disambiguates the word in lines 17-19 by adding a detail to the story about a 'small bloody lump' lying 'next to [the pupil]' ( sån en lille (0.2) klump der lige lå å var blodig nede på jorden ved siden af dem ) after the event.

Like in (9), here the referent of singular de is known to the speaker, but slightly more detail is revealed about them in CAL's story than was the case in the previous example. So far this article has shown that singular de may be used about referents that are unspecified for gender - interestingly though, one of the only details revealed about the referent in CAL 's story has to do with something that is often associated with or taken to be indicative of someone's gender,  namely  genitals. 8 CAL's  use  of de here  may  be  a  way  of  indicating that  gender is  not  relevant  to  the  discussion,  even  when  other  elements  in the  discourse  makes  it  available  as  such.  Additionally,  like  in  the  previous examples, it may be a distal usage in order to maintain discretion due to the sensitive topic.

## 6.3. Specific specified referent

Finally, singular de may be used in the same way hun and han typically are: In this third use, singular de is used specifically about referents who wish to be referred to that way. For instance, the referent may be nonbinary, in which case the pronoun specifies the referent's gender as nonbinary. 9 Examples of this are not present in my video data, but (11) is an example from a private instant messaging conversation. Aska and Birke share an acquaintance, Charly, whose chosen pronoun is de . In the excerpt, Aska has just encountered some content online related to an interest of Charly's, which she takes a screenshot of and sends it to Birke via a chat client:

- (11) Aska:

[image]

Aska:   Jeg har ikke snakket      med Charly siden vi mødte dem ,   men 1SG have not     talk.PST.PRT  with    Charly    since      we meet.PST 3SG        but jeg har        det som om de skal se  det her 1SG have.PRS  it as       if      3SG   shall   see  it      here 'I haven't talked to Charly since we met them, but I feel like they should see this'

Birke:   Jeg kan sige af erfaring  at     det er helt legitimt at  sende Charly 1SG  can   say   PP experience  CONJ  it   is  whole legitimate INF send     Charly ting     ud af  det blå thing.PL  PP PP  the   blue

'I can say from experience that it's totally allowed to send Charly things out of the blue'

Aska and Birke both mention Charly's name, making it clear that they are talking  about  a  specific  referent.  They  are  aware  both  of  Charly's  chosen pronouns  and  of  Charly's  gender.  The  use  of  singular de here,  as  opposed to the earlier examples, is therefore not a strategy for avoiding orienting to gender, but rather picks out a unique referent with the most specific pronoun available.

## 6.4. Negotiating gender indexing

The previous sections have demonstrated that using singular de is an effective strategy  for  referring  to  referents  while  keeping  their  gender  unspecified, whether  because  the  gender  is  unknown  or  irrelevant,  or  as  a  means  of protecting the referent's identity. As far as can be inferred from the data, all participants in the conversations are able to both produce and comprehend singular de . Repair is rarely initiated, and instead continuation markers such as ja, jaer 'yes, yeah' and hm, mm are produced in repair-relevant positions. In some cases, however, the participants may switch between different reference strategies  and  may  sometimes  not  align  with  each  other's  strategies.  In  all three experiment groups (including the group that did not produce singular de at  all),  participants frequently use different pronouns in reference to the same referent, switching between singular de, man or en, du, vedkommende ('the  one  concerning') ,  jeg,  den,  han,  hun,  han  eller  hun between and even within turns. They also sometimes forego pronouns altogether, opting instead for other strategies such as referring to the character with a noun ( personen, barnet, det menneske 'the person, the child, that human'). In some of the cases, this mixing of strategies can be seen as a negotiation of whether and how to index gender in the interaction. An example of this is shown in (12). In the excerpt,  Group  2  is  discussing  the  baptism  story. 10 They  have  been  talking about what might happen next, to which CAL has suggested that the character can make a homemade card to bring to the baptism. CAL has consistently referred to the character using singular de . ALF then raises a potential issue for choosing which kind of card to bring:

```
(12) Group 2 | 42:11 01   *ALF: de:r også øh:: (.) muligheden for bare a: (.) han ved jo ikke hvad the:re's also uh:: (.) the possibility just tha:t (.) he doesn't know what 02   *ALF: k ø n barnet er lyder det som om (.) det sån jeg [forstod det↘ gender the child is it sounds like (.) that's how I understood it 03   *CAL: [vdj ø h:→ 04   *DAN: ↑mm→ 05   *ALF: s å han [kunneso he could
```

```
06   *DAN: [↑DET KAN GODT VÆRE at de- han= IT MIGHT BE that they- he 07   *CAL: =det kan godt være de bare gerne ville: [g ø re noget andet→ it might be that they just wanted to do something else 08   *DAN: [øh: de bare e:r uh: they a:re just 09 frustreret over at øh: [(.) ting er så k ø nnet↘ frustrated that uh: things are so gendered 10   *CAL: [°jep°↘ yup 11   *ALF: ja↘ yes 12   *DAN: ø hm:→ uhm: 13   *ALF: men det kan jo v æ re han- han kunne jo bare tage en gamble jo å så but it might be he- he could just take a gamle and then 14   *ALF: bare tage en af dem å så (.) se om det var rigtigt↘ just take one of them and then (.) see if it was right 15 (0.5) 16   *CAL: ∙hh ø h:m [bz:::→ 17   *BOB: [jeg tror ikke det er det [der→ I don't think that that is what 18   *CAL: [det tror- jeg tror ikke det det that think- I don't think that that 19   *CAL: der er problemet↘ is what the problem is
```

In lines 01-02, ALF presents his interpretation of the story, namely that the main  character  does  not  know  the  gender  of  the  child  being  baptized.  In doing so, ALF refers to the character with the pronoun han 'he' , categorizing the character as male. ALF's interpretation is met with a doubtful vdjøh 'uh' from CAL in line 03, although he does not yet follow up on this potential objection.  Instead, DAN responds in lines 06 and 08-09 that the character might just be 'frustrated that things are so gendered' , and doing so, he rejects ALF's interpretation of what the conflict of the story is about. While in line 06, DAN's utterance is still unfinished and thus not unambiguously a rejection yet, he both interrupts ALF's utterance in 05 and raises his voice, which might signal that he's about to disagree with what has been said. As Sacks (1992:308) observes, the different parts of a conversation are 'invariably relevant' , and a turn necessarily addresses the previous turn. Since ALF has referred to the main character with han, while CAL has earlier referred to that same referent with de, DAN is now forced to decide whether to follow one or the other of these two strategies (or introduce a third one). Initially, he does not adopt ALF's choice of pronoun, referring to the character with singular de instead, but  immediately  after  restarts  and  says han ,  conforming  to  ALF's  strategy. Before  DAN can continue,  CAL  takes  the  floor  again,,  suggesting  that  the character ' bare gerne ville gøre noget andet '  ('just  wanted  to  do  something different'),  using  singular de as  he  has  been  doing  before,  thereby avoiding taking  a  stance  on  the  character's  gender.  With  this  utterance,  he  not  only rejects  ALF's  reference  strategy,  but  also  his  interpretation  of  the  story's conflict, siding with DAN instead. If DAN's switching between han and de in line 06 is interpreted as him being conflicted as to whether to adopt ALF's or CAL's choice of pronouns, CAL's siding with his interpretation of the story might prompt him to also use CAL's reference strategy, which he does in line 08, referring to the main character with de .

At this point, ALF could switch reference strategy now that de is supported by two other participants, but the negotiation does not end here. Furthermore, the group also has not yet agreed on an interpretation of the story. In line 11, ALF says ja 'yes' , which in this case is not a sign of agreement, but rather ALF acknowledging the argument that CAL and DAN has made before continuing in line 13 with a different suggestion: That the main character could 'gamble' and pick a card at random. He thereby reiterates his interpretation that the main character does not know the gender of the baby, while continuing his reference  strategy  of  referring  to  the  character  with han .  After  a  relatively long  pause  of  0.5  seconds,  both  BOB  and  CAL  once  again  reject  ALF's interpretation. As a result, a contrast is made not only between ALF's versus CAL and DAN's referential strategies and (avoiding) orienting to gender, but also between their interpretations of the story.

## 7. Modified pronoun paradigm

Section 6 has demonstrated that singular de is  used consistently in interactional Danish. It may be used both when the gender of the referent is unknown to the speaker, and when the speaker does know the gender of the referent but chooses not to specify it in that utterance. While there is some instability with regards to agreement, this is not something that hinders its functioning in context and in this it does not differ from other cases of atypical agreement in Danish (cf. section 5.1). Based on these observations, I propose a modified version of the paradigm of Danish pronouns as presented in Table 1, shown as Table 4.

Table 4: Modified pronoun paradigm.

|          |            | Nominative             | Oblique                  | Genitive                        | Reflexive                  |
|----------|------------|------------------------|--------------------------|---------------------------------|----------------------------|
| singular | 1st person | jeg                    | mig                      | min / mit / mine                | mig selv                   |
| singular | 2nd person | du De (polite)         | dig Dem (polite)         | din / dit / dine Deres (polite) | dig selv Dem selv (polite) |
| singular | 3rd person | hun han de den det man | hende ham dem den det en | hendes hans deres dens dets en  | OBL + selv sig selv        |
| plural   | 1st person | vi                     | os                       | Vores                           | os selv                    |
| plural   | 2nd person | I                      | jer                      | Jeres                           | jer selv                   |
| plural   | 3rd person | de                     | dem                      | Deres                           | dem selv                   |

## 8. Discussion: Change and flexibility in the pronouns class

Thus  far,  this  paper  has  presented  and  analysed  examples  of  a  previously undescribed use of the pronoun de .  While singular de has not been studied from a linguistic perspective until now, this does not necessarily mean that the phenomenon is new. The earliest example in my data was recorded in 2014, but most likely it was in use prior to that. Estimating more closely when it started occurring requires work beyond the scope of this paper, but a relevant parallel to draw is to English singular they , which has been around for a very long time (as a generic pronoun since the 14 th century according to Balhorn 2004) and which is almost identical to singular de in both its generic and specific uses. For instance, Conrod (2019) examines definite, specific use of singular they , which resembles the non-generic uses of singular de analysed in this paper. Given these parallels, it is tempting to hypothesize that singular de has arisen due to English influence. But it is also possible that singular they and singular de are a case of convergent evolution. Danish and English are similar both in terms of ancestry and current sociocultural environment, and it would not be impossible for some of the same processes and developments to take place in them both. The situation is similar to the one for generic du as described by Jensen (2009:91) - it may be a consequence of English influence, but without further research, it cannot be said for certain.

Whether  or  not  singular de is  a  new  phenomenon  or  not,  it  has characteristics  associated  with  linguistic  innovations.  Most  prominently,  it seems to be more common and more accepted among younger speakers 11 . All instances of singular de in my video-audio data are produced by speakers

· · 000 001

..

·

··

05

··

between 20 and 35 years of age (estimated). The one group from the elicitation data  who  did  not  produce  any  instances  of  singular de, Group  1,  was  also set  apart  from  Groups 1 and 2 by being older in age, in their late 40s and early 50s. To examine further whether this is an indication that singular de is primarily used by young speakers, I conducted an acceptability rating survey (n=90) that asked participants to rate a series of recorded example sentences for how natural they sounded on a scale from 1 to 7 (cf. Boss 2019). While the survey should be seen only as an initial probe with further, more throughout research needed to draw a definite conclusion, the results do suggest a negative correlation between age and likelihood of giving the target sentences a high rating. This is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Correlations (between -0.26 and -0.5) between age of participant and rating

<!-- image -->

## Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

of  target  sentences:  Target  sentences  were Det er en der synes at de selv er en god person (4), De er læge, så du kan godt stole på dem (7), Man kan aftale med en eller anden at de gør det for en (8), Jeg har ikke snakket med klienten siden jeg mødte dem (12) , Hvis man får en ny ven er det vigtigt at lære dem at kende (13)

Aside from younger speakers, minority groups have also historically been a driving force for linguistic  change.  Studies  of  English  singular they discuss LGBTQIA+ communities as playing a role in the change and variation of its use.  Conrod (2019:134) suggests that it might be due to the communities in question having a stronger need for gender neutral pronouns:

This  [the  need  for  pronouns  other  than he or she ]  is  both  to accommodate  people  who  aren't  easily  referred  to  by he/she , but also to accommodate the needs of people to de-emphasize gender when, for example, discussing a same-gender partner in a potentially homophobic context.

(Conrod 2019:134)

I  suspect  that  it  may  be  a  similar  situation  for  singular de ,  and  to  test  this intuition, my acceptability survey also asked participants whether they were in contact with an LGBTQIA+ community (e.g. by being LGBTQIA+ themselves or  knowing a friend or family member who is). The results suggested that here,  too,  is  a  negative  correlation;  each  of  the  target  sentences  yielded  a correlation between -0.3 and -0.4. While it is indicated that younger speakers and speakers in contact with LGBTQIA+ communities are more likely to use singular de ,  these  are  initial  results  and  other  factors  such  as  singular de ' s position  in  the  sentence  (fronted,  subordinated,  etc.),  the  inferred  context, and to what extent the referent is interpreted as generic may influence the acceptability ratings. It would be interesting to look further into this possible variation - sociolinguistic or information structure-wise - in future studies.

Returning  to  Conrod's  (2019)  argument  that  singular,  gender-neutral use of they might be driven by a need to de-emphasize gender, this is also a plausible theory in relation to singular de .  In  recent  years,  issues  of  gender discrimination and the existence of transgender and nonbinary persons have increasingly  become  topics  in  the  public  debate.  If  speakers  are  generally more conscious of gender and how assumptions about gender might be made through language, e.g. gendered pronouns, they might also seek strategies to avoid making those assumptions. A contrast to this gender-avoidant use of singular de might be seen in parts of my elicitation data were the participants do explicitly orient to the gender of the character they are discussing. Groups

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

1 and 3 each go through a sequence where the same character is referred to with multiple different pronouns by the same speaker in quick succession; CAM in example (13), where Group 1 is discussing the coffee story, and ANN in (14), where Group 3 is discussing the playground story:

- 14   *CEA: yeah
- (13) Group 1 | 2:33 01   *CAM: men ud fra den der er der bare en aktør så= but according to that there is just one actor so 02   *ART: [↑ja↗ yes 03 → *CAM: [=der kun hende og kaffekoppen [eller måske to→ there is only her and the coffee cup or maybe two 04   *ART: [eller han↘ or he 05   *BIT: og kaffen↘ and the coffee 06 → *CAM: hende han eller hen ja↘ her he or sie 12  yes (14) Group 3 | 8:08 01   *ANN: ne:j så man skal lissom asså sørge for at man bliver respekteret no: then you need to like make sure that you are respected 02 på en eller anden måde→ somehow 03   *ANN: ø:hm→ uhm 04   *CEA: jaer↘ yeah 05   *ANN: når man er ny for ellers så hvis (.) man er fwhen you are new because otherwise then if (.) you are t06   *ANN: ikke at man skal være sindssygt hård men hvis man er alt for blød not that you should be crazy strict but if you are way too soft 07 til at starte med→ in the beginning 08   *ANN: hh så det måske s å n lidt→ then it is maybe like a little 09 → *ANN: okay men så kan vi slippe afsted med mere når det er hende der okay but then we can get away with more when it is her 10 har g å rdvagt eller ham der (har gårdvagt) ((mumbled)) who is on playground duty or him who (is on playground duty) 11   *BEX: mm↘ 12 (.) 13 → *ANN: hen↘ sie jaer↘

In both examples, the speaker points to the main character of the story, using one pronoun, hende 'her' in both cases, which indexes that character as female. Immediately after, this categorization of the character as female is questioned by adding eller han/ham ' or he/him' , which acknowledges the possibility that the character is male. In (14), it is the same speaker, ANN, who makes this addition,  while  in  (13),  another  speaker,  ART,  is  the  one  to  challenge  the categorization.  In  both  examples,  the  original  speaker  (CAM  and  ANN) eventually adds the pronoun hen 'sie' as well, introducing the possibility that the character is neither male or female, or at least that the participants in the conversation cannot know either way.

A similar thing happens in (15) where Group 2 are discussing the dressing room story. This story is set apart from the other stimulus stories by the fact that the main character is explicitly said to be nonbinary. This means that 1) the participants have knowledge about the character's gender and 2) the story itself orients to gender as a relevant topic.

## (15) Group 2 | 30:01

```
01   *CAL: ja hva er der sket↗ yes what has happened 02   *BOB: ja↘ yes 03   *CAL: de:: they:: 04   *BOB: personen identificerer sig som non binær å så: øh: [føler= the person identifies as nonbinary and then: uh: they feel 05   *ALF: [der er ikke it is not 06 mulighed for dem→ possible for them 07   *BOB: =de sig utilpas uncomfortable 08   *DAN: ja ja↘ yes yes 09   *CAL: [(xxxxx) 10   *BOB: [(xx ja) å så f ø ler personen at der ikke er mulighed→ yes and then the person feels that it is not possible 11 (0.2) 12   *DAN: jaeh↘ yes 13 → *BOB: for sån: (0.2) at blive: (0.3) at de:r et sted hvo:r [hø- h ø n= to like: (0.2) to be: (0.3) that there is a place where x- xe 13 14   *CAL: [hvor where
```

## Ehm Hjorth Miltersen

Scandinavian Studies in Language, 11(2), 2020 (22-61)

```
15   *BOB: [(kan sån)→ (can like) 16   *DAN: [blive:: [akkomoderet eller [hva (.) hva det nu hedder↘ be:: accommodated or what (.) whatever it's called 17   *BOB: [ja↘ [ja↘ yes yes 18   *BOB: lige præcis↘ exactly
```

In lines 06 and 07, both BOB and ALF initially refer to the main character using  singular de .  However,  as  the  discussion  progresses,  BOB  uses  the neologistic pronoun høn in line 13 to refer to the same character. The pronoun is  produced somewhat hesitantly, restarting it once and with several of the preceding words elongated. Similarly in examples (13) and (14), the hen is tagged on at the end after the original utterance is finished, and in ANN's case the end of her previous utterance is mumbled, all suggesting some uncertainty surrounding  their  pronoun  usage.  This  uncertainty  may  be  regarding  how and whether to categorize the character being spoken about. In examples (13) and (14), the character's gender is indexed as soon as the first pronoun hende is  spoken, but this indexation could have 'passed' without the participants explicitly noticing it (Hopper and LeBaron 1998: 60). However, the indexation is made explicit when eller han/ham is added and highlights that an alternative interpretation is possible, thus making the question of gender a relevant topic, which the speakers can further orient to by adding the gender neutral pronoun hen . In (15), gender is already implicitly a relevant topic in the story, and BOB orients to this by using høn . In contrast to the analyses in section 6, singular de is not used in these excerpts, suggesting that perhaps singular de is more likely to be employed to avoid indexing gender, while hen and høn, both constructed pronouns explicitly designed to be used gender neutrally, can function as tools for the speakers to explicitly index gender (neutrality).

Hen (but not høn , to my knowledge) is also used as a chosen pronoun, such as in (16), where it refers to a specific referent (like the specific gender-specified use of singular de ). The excerpt is from data that was originally recorded for a course on Child Language Acquisition and features a 4-yearold (CHI) and two adults in everyday interaction. In the excerpt, CHI is looking at the second adult present through the camera:

```
(16) køkkenhygge | 5:40 CHI: kan jeg se dig↗ can I see you STF:
```

kan du- det da dig der ved om du kan se hen↘

can you- you're the one who knows if you can see hir

Evidently, singular de is not alone in being a pronoun that is used in interaction in ways that differ from traditional descriptions. In terms of gender reference, the  pronoun den 'it  (common  gender)'  is  also  used  with  specific  genderspecified  reference  (Miltersen  2018).  Another  example  is  Bruun's  (2019) description  of  non-generic,  1 st person  usage  of  the  otherwise  generic  3 rd person pronoun man .

A final perspective to consider in regard to singular de as, if not an entirely new usage, then one that is gaining ground, is the fact that its occurrence is not limited to interactional contexts like the ones analysed above. While it is rare in more formal registers (such as news articles and similar), is does occur in  asynchronous, written texts, such as example (17). The example is from a  flowchart  made by Den Grønne Studenterbevægelse ('The  Green  Student's Movement) and posted to the organisation's Facebook page. The flowchart promotes the movement's protest event 'Green Friday' , an anti-capitalist and climate-activist alternative to Black Friday. It starts with a balloon with the question Skal du købe julegaver? 'Do you need to buy Christmas presents?' . If the reader follows the yes-arrow, the flowchart proceeds with balloons with questions about the recipient of the present to be bought, i.e. a hypothetical person. The last two balloons are the parts relevant to the present analysis, and the text in them is reproduced as (17):

## (17) a. er det én, der mener, de har      brug for materielle ting    for

is    it      one   REL   believe.PRS 3SG have.PRS  need      PP     material.PL    thing.PL PP at   blive  lykkelige? INF  become  happy.PL

'is it someone who believes they need material things to be happy?'

- b. tag dem under armen  og med til   green friday - vi take.IMP    3SG    PP               arm.DEF     and  with    PP     green      friday        we   PRS lover   det gør jer   mere lykkelige! promise.  it make.PRS  2PL     more     happy.PL

'take them by the hand and bring them along to Green Friday - we promise it will make you happier!'

The example shows that singular de is  sufficiently  established  in  Danish  to be used in general audience semi-formal written language, at least by some speakers.

In summary, contrary to traditional perceptions of pronouns as a closed class, Danish pronouns have undergone and are currently undergoing various innovations, pertaining both to singular de and to other pronouns, all of which would be interesting topics for future studies.

## 9. Conclusion

This paper has presented and analysed examples of singular de used in talkin-interaction, which is a use of the pronoun de that has not previously been described  from  a  grammatical  and  linguistic  perspective.  It  is  found  that singular de is identical to plural de in form, apart from the fact that singular de can take singular agreement on adjectives and predicate nouns. The two differ from each other most significantly in their referential scope. The analysis of the use of singular de in interaction finds that speakers may use singular de about both generic and specific referents, and about specific referents that are either specified or unspecified for gender. Speakers can use singular de as a reference strategy to avoid indexing gender and thereby orienting to gender as a relevant topic. However, they may also use singular de to explicitly index the gender of the referent as nonbinary. There appears to be some variation in the use of singular de across speakers depending on age and possibly other sociolinguistic factors, similarly to what is the case for English singular they , which from a use perspective singular de resembles highly. It is also relevant to  compare  singular de to  other  innovations  in  Danish  pronouns,  such  as the Swedish loan hen ,  which may index gender (neutrality) more explicitly in  interaction.  In  conclusion,  phenomena  such  as  singular de and  other innovative  pronouns  cast  doubt  on  traditional  definitions  of  the  pronouns class  as  a  closed  class.  The  characterisation  of  pronouns  as  semantically poor might also be questioned; speakers in interaction may use pronouns to communicate and negotiate various things about identity, social stance, and membership categorization, singular de being just one example.

## Acknowledgements

I  would  like  to  thank  several  people  for  their  help  in  bringing  this  article about: An anonymous reviewer for constructive criticism and kind words. The DanTIN group for feedback and sparring, an in particular two members of the group for proofreading the article. A handful of my colleagues for helping me test the elicitation exercise; and the participants in both the elicitation exercise and the survey for lending their time and linguistic effort.

## APPENDIX A: Case stories

## The coffee story:

Da: Klokken er 8:12 mandag morgen, og en studerende har lige netop nået at købe en kop kaffe i kantinen før undervisningen starter, men kommer til at spilde hele koppen ud over sig selv på vej op ad trappen.

En: It's 8:12 AM Monday morning, and a student has just bought a cup of coffee in time before class starts, but accidentally spills the entire cup [on themselves] on the way up the stairs.

## The supermarket story

Da: En kunde i supermarkedet skynder sig hen til kasserne. Ved den ene er der kun én person i kø, og bag kassen sidder en nyansat medarbejder, der lige nu har problemer med at bippe en vare ind. Køen til den anden kasse er meget lang, men der sidder en erfaren medarbejder ved den. Kunden overvejer hvilken kasse der er bedst at stille sig i kø til.

En: A customer at the supermarket rushes to the checkout stations. At one station, only one person is in line, and behind the counter is a recently hired cashier, who is currently experiencing trouble registering an item. The line behind the other counter is very long, but it is served by an experienced cashier. The customer considers which station might be best to get in line to.

## The playground story

Da: En nyansat folkeskolelærer er på sin første gårdvagt og ser pludselig to børn der er ved at komme op at slås. Det ene barn smider en plastikskovl efter det andet barn.

En:  A  recently  hired  primary  school  teacher  is  on  the  first  playground  duty  and suddenly sees two children who are about to get into a fight. One child throws a plastic shovel after the other child.

## The dressing room story

Da: En elev i 6.A har for vane at pjække fra idrætstimerne. Eleven er nonbinær og har ikke lyst til at klæde om i de kønsopdelte omklædningsrum.

En: A pupil in class 6A tends to skip P .E. classes. The pupil is nonbinary and doesn't want to change in either of the gender segregated dressing rooms.

## The baptism story

Da: De nybagte forældres bedste ven er på jagt efter et lykønskningskort til at tage med til dåben, men ender med frustreret at opgive, da alle kortene er enten lyseblå eller lyserøde.

En: The new parents' best friend is hunting for a wishing card to bring to the baptism, but eventually gives up, as all the cards are either light blue or pink.

## Abbreviations

1 = 1 st person, 2 = 2 nd person, 3 = 3 rd  person, ADV = adverb, CONJ = conjunction, DEF = definite, IMP = imperative, INF = infinitive particle, PL = plural, POSS = possessive, PP = preposition, PRS = present tense, PRT = particle, PST = past tense, PST.PRT = past participle, REFL = reflexive, REL = relative pronoun, SG = singular

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## Endnotes

- 1 More so for 1 st person than 2 nd person, where other devices may be necessary to pick out the proper referent among several potential addressees, e.g. by gaze or vocatives).
- 2 Animals and 'metaphorically alive' objects such as dolls may be referred to with either den/det or gendered pronouns.
- 3 Research does however suggest that he is not perceived as truly generic by speakers (e.g. Mühläusler and Harré 1990:CH9).
- 4 Danish exhibits T/V-distinction, although it is nowadays rarely used.
- 5 https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf
- 6 Relatedly,  Conrod  (2019:171)  hypothesizes  that  English  singular they (which  is parallel to singular de in several ways) can be used to signal a social or relational distance between the conversational participants and the referent ('distal they ').
- 7 While the utterance in 05 is syntactically and intonationally potentially complete, it is pragmatically incomplete (it is unclear why ADA is bringing up that she looked at the event page), which lets BEA not take the turn despite the long pause.
- 8 Of course, it is not a one-to-one relation, and like in (10) it is perfectly possible that the referent's chosen pronoun is de . To explore this possibility, I was able to consult with CAL about three weeks after the recording, and he confirmed that the referent is male and the more specific pronoun would be han . CAL also informed me that he makes a conscious effort to use gender neutral language when the gender of the referent is unknown, but that he was surprised to hear that he had used de in this instance, since he did know the person's gender. This illustrates quite well that pronoun strategy can both be a conscious choice and subconscious behaviour, even in the same speaker.
- 9 It may also be that the referent is not nonbinary but wish to be spoken about in gender neutral language. In that case, the pronoun does not indicate the (specific) referent's gender, but its gender feature is unspecified. As I have no examples of it in my data, I will not discuss it further here.
- 10 In this particular story, the character in the story is described as the ven 'friend' of the parents. The word ven can both be interpreted as gender neutral or as male specific (as opposed to veninde 'female friend'), which could arguably have prompted ALI to categorize the character as male. (The choice of the word ven is a fault on behalf of the author, as I do not have the gender-specific meaning in my idiolect). However, participants in the group do refer to characters in other stories that are only described with exclusively gender neutral terms (such as 'student' and 'customer') with han ,  so the kind of negotiation happening in (12) is not solely due the ambiguity of the word ven and can be seen as an example of a more general practice.
- 11 Incidentally,  this  is  also  the  case  for  singular they (Conrod 2019; Konnelly and Cowper 2019).
- 12 I have translated hen to the English neologistic pronoun sie/hir , as both are constructed pronouns explicitly designed to be gender neutral.
- 13 høn is translated into xe, another English constructed gender neutral pronoun