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<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>The use of they and its forms with such
antecedents is actually about 600<br>
years old.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
Chaucer (ca. 1395, quoted from Jespersen in the M-W usage
dictionary): "And<br>
whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up ...."<br>
<br>
In more recent times, "their" (singular) has been routinely
used not only<br>
for 'gender neutrality' but also for 'notional agreement'. E.g., in a
poker<br>
game in the 1960's, in which no female has ever played (nor will ever
play)<br>
and in which no player is interested in feminist politics, I can
picture<br>
(and I can remember, I think) "Does everybody have their
cards?" --</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>although it's grammatically incorrect
IMHO.</blockquote>
<div><br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Here's one:</div>
<div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000">A player has to be
responsible for their actions in this league</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">-(then-)Knicks General
Manager Ernie Grunfeld</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>(The league in question is the all-male National Basketball
Association, not a merged league of NBA and WNBA players.)</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>But grammatically incorrect according to whose grammar? Is
this any different from saying that everyone says "Who do you
like?" "although this is grammatically
incorrect"? If the claim is that the "their"
(with sex-indefinite or even sex-presupposed but non-specific
reference) is inconsistent with traditional usage, you're conceding
that it's not a valid claim. If your claim is that it's
"illogical" to have a plural pronoun with a singular
antecedent, Bodine and others have observed that it's equally
illogical to have a singular masculine pronoun with a possibly female
antecedent, or for that matter (we might add) to ask "Who's
there?" when you hear two people knocking and shouting outside
your door (rather than "Who're there?").</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
I find this inoffensive as a casual usage, but I confess I am annoyed
to<br>
see it self-consciously used in formal writing: I think I feel
embarrassed<br>
for the writer who apparently feels that he is making some sort
of</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>political point or contribution in this
manner.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Were the well-known feminists Chaucer and Shakespeare making the
same political point when they used "their" with singular
non-specific antecedents? </div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>...I think in these enlightened times
English needs</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>not only a common-gender word for
"he/she" but also a<br>
gender-and-species-and-even-animateness-n<span
></span>eutral third-person-singular</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>pronoun.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>See the Dennis Baron book cited earlier for the sad history of
such attempts to devise such a pronoun--he calls this "The word
that failed".</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>larry</div>
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