required plural marking in 2PP

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Jul 9 14:39:34 UTC 2012


On Jul 8, 2012, at 11:57 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> but "guys" still has the hint of excluding women
>
> But it's been being used by women to include women since at least the
> late on the various campuses of UCal.
>
> OTOH, it *ought* to exclude them!


But then "men" ought to *in*clude them (cf. OED, _man_, 1a), as it did through the 16th c. ("The Lord had but one paire of men in paradise"--1597).

LH

> WTF? Was willt das Weib? ;-)
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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