<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I must protest! "degenerated into a religious discussion" -- there are few topics so interesting to a sociolinguist - on several levels - as language and religion and very much left unexplored. There are John Sawyer's SACRED LANGUAGES AND SACRED TEXTS, 1999, AND William Samarin's LANGUAGE IN RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, 1976, but most of the literature is to be found in articles spread all over creation, and not very many at that. Bernard Spolsky's "Religion as a site of language contact", ANNUAL REVIEW OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, 2003 is a place to start. Historians have written interesting stuff and Peter Burke's writings are well worth exploring. So are SIL people and their dissertations. Happy hunting, Jeff. Christina<br><div><div>On Mar 3, 2008, at 9:12 PM, Ann Evans wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">It's interesting that this post has degenerated into a religious discussion when something extremely pertinent is at hand. How are we to express the gender-neutral pronoun? I tell my classes that it will be up to them to figure this one out, but I would like to be a of a little more help to them than that. Is it true that "they" was once legitimately the gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun? How else, other than rewriting sentences, can this issue be resolved. One posting recently mentioned "yo" as a gender-neutral pronoun, but I don't see that catching on. Any other inventions lately?<br> <br>Ann<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 9:02 PM, Christina Paulston <<a href="mailto:paulston+@pitt.edu">paulston+@pitt.edu</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Yes, H L MecKen - thank you for the correction. I have myself<br> misattributed the quotation to an Arkansas principal, I think it was,<br> so I feel honour bound to assign it properly. CBP<br> <div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">On Mar 3, 2008, at 8:51 PM, Ronald Kephart wrote:<br> <br> > H. L. Mencken? Ron<br> ><br> ><br> > On 3/3/08 8:48 PM, "Christina Paulston" <<a href="mailto:paulston+@pitt.edu">paulston+@pitt.edu</a>> wrote:<br> ><br> >> Just for the record "if it was good enough for Jesus etc" is a quote<br> >> from Menchen. (Did I misspell his name - my spelling checker thinks<br> >> so ?)<br> ><br> <br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br></blockquote></div><br></body></html>