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<TITLE>Re: Gender neutrality and language</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Times New Roman"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>On 3/3/08 9:12 PM, "Ann Evans" <annevans123@gmail.com> wrote:<BR>
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> <FONT COLOR="#0000FF">It's interesting that this post has degenerated into a religious discussion <BR>
> ....<BR>
</FONT>> <BR>
And I apologize for that, since it was my fault. I am especially sensitive <BR>
to this issue this semester because I am teaching a cultural anthropology <BR>
course that seems to have an unusually high number of creationists, <BR>
intelligent designists, and theistic evolutionists. So when a poster here <BR>
seemed to suggest that the male first, female second order of things was put <BR>
there by a god, my anti-nonsense reflex went into overdrive. Sorry.<BR>
<BR>
At the same, though, I agree with Lynn that this wasn’t necessarily a <BR>
“degeneration.” Folk models of language play an important, sometimes <BR>
Determinative, role in language policies, and beliefs and values regarding <BR>
the supernatural are often a part of those folk models.<BR>
<BR>
> <FONT COLOR="#0000FF">...when something extremely pertinent is at hand. How are we to express the <BR>
> gender-neutral pronoun? I tell my classes that it will be up to them to <BR>
> figure this one out, but I would like to be a of a little more help to them <BR>
> than that. Is it true that "they" was once legitimately the gender-neutral <BR>
> third-person singular pronoun? How else, other than rewriting sentences, can <BR>
> this issue be resolved. One posting recently mentioned "yo" as a <BR>
> gender-neutral pronoun, but I don't see that catching on. Any other <BR>
> inventions lately?<BR>
> <BR>
</FONT>Yes, “they” has been, historically, used as a generic pronoun, and by some <BR>
pretty good writers, too. For example:<BR>
<BR>
There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">their <BR>
</FONT>well-acquainted friend <BR>
— Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3 <BR>
(1594)<BR>
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"To be sure, you knew no actual good of me -- but nobody thinks of that when <BR>
they fall in love."<BR>
__Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)<BR>
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A person cannot help <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">their </FONT>birth.<BR>
— Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)<BR>
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And so on. So, I don’t think we need to invent anything, and in any case <BR>
inventing a pronoun (closed lexical class) is a lot harder than inventing <BR>
nouns and verbs, which are open classes. (Note though that we already <BR>
invented “y’all” and “youze,” and “you-uns” to express second person plural, <BR>
which “standard” English lacks, and some African American communities <BR>
borrowed the Igbo second plural; “unu” to fill this gap.)<BR>
<BR>
The simplest and most elegant way to fix this, in my view, is to make <BR>
generic sentences plural, so that “they” doesn’t upset the Grammar Police.<BR>
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Ron<BR>
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