Re: Singular "they" [again} was re: ENGLISH!

Harvey Van Sickle wrote:
On 27 Feb 2006, Iskandar Baharuddin wrote

In order to weasel around this burning issue you have redefined
"singular".

It is really amusing to watch you NESsies struggling with a
problem unique to the English language.

Struggling? Idiomatic English stopped "struggling" with this issue a
long time ago.

Idiomatic English -- as you acknowledge and apparently condemn -- is
flexible. Insisting that the division between singular and plural
pronouns is sacrosanct is not only dogmatic but also, ultimately,
futile.

You call this "weasel[ing]". Others call it a strength based on
functionality.

To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill:
"Never in the history of human debate have so many argued so much
over so little."

Except that there's no longer a meaningful argument.

Idiomatic English is in the process of adopting -- has near as dammit
adopted -- the former-third-person-plural as a useful non-gender-
specific singular pronoun.

The "debate" isn't there: the die-hards have lost.

Quite true: I often catch myself doing it, though I find it inelegant
and avoid it in writing. What's still interesting, though, is that
people haven't yet mastered its use. "Responsible dog-owners clean up
after their dog", which I quoted here a while back from a public notice,
is just one of the messes people are getting themselves into. "The man
who left their wallet in the lavatory can collect it from Reception" --
you know the kind of thing.

I'm getting the feeling that "they" and "their" are acquiring a status
more indefinite than simply that of common gender. Personally, I don't
like it (as if that mattered); but I wish I could live long enough to
see how it finally settles down. I'm inclined to speculate that this
apparent indefinite use is precisely a response to the absurdity of
using it for "his or her": as if there's a communal thought-process on
the lines of "It can't rationally mean that, so it must somehow refer to
_any_ person or persons unknown."

All this, of course, can't be happening in our time by coincidence. It
must be a response to our social decision that gendered words are to be
questioned. "Interrogated", as the theorists put it -- perhaps a
consciously scary choice of word.

--
Mike.


.

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