"gender neutral pronouns"

[John Dunn]

The distinction between 'Have you eaten?' and 'Did you eat?' is very much alive and well in most varieties of British English.  Indeed, I used to refer to this distinction when teaching the difference between imperfective and perfective questions in Russian:

Вы звонили домой? [Vy zvonili domoj?] = Have you phoned home?
Вы позвонили домой? [Vy pozvonili domoj?] = Did you phone home?

The distinction is being lost in some Scottish varieties of English, and in my view it is the uncertainty caused by its partial loss that leads to the appearance of the strange hybrid forms 'I have went', 'he has came' that are widely heard among speakers in the West of Scotland .

John Dunn.

-----Original Message-----
From: Emily Saunders <emilka at MAC.COM>
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 07:39:30 -0700
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] "gender neutral pronouns"

[. . .]

As a sort of footnote, I expect that the use of "an" in front of the  
words with pronounced "h's" (an historian vs. a historian) is going to  
disappear by the next generation or so.  The present perfect, it seems  
to me, has already undergone a fairly fundamental shift in standard  
usage where "did you eat?" is as acceptable as "have you eaten," in  
ascertaining whether or not someone is, at this moment, still hungry.

Respectfully,

Emily Saunders


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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