"gender neutral pronouns"

[Hugh Olmsted]

The present perfect may be undergoing changes, but the example of  
"Did you eat (yet)" should not be taken as too significant; it has  
been around a long time without causing much consternation.  A  
favorite example among American linguists in the 40's-60's was the  
jolly phonetic reduction of "did you eat yet" in allegro speech to  
something like "Dzheechet."  And all accepted it as permissible  
English (U.S., at least) without concluding that the present perfect  
was on the block.

And as for the original tortuous question about "its" vs. "her", this  
is clearly a moment of intergenerational and possibly international  
mutual discomfort, with either solution evoking cringing,  
consternation, condescension -- some marked reaction -- on the part  
of some of the potential readers.  Why not resort to the age-old  
solution, helpful in such cases: rephrasing?
How about something like:  "Pushkin is celebrated as both the  
greatest poet and the first great historian of Russia"?

Please don't pridirat'sia at my particular solution -- for infelicity  
or imprecise semantic capture of the original sense: instead, what do  
you think of the tactic of rephrasing, at such moments?

Hugh Olmsted


On Sep 5, 2008, at 11:18 AM, Robert A. Rothstein wrote:

> Emily Saunders wrote:
>> 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.
> Recall the early scene from "Annie Hall" in which Woody Allen's  
> character describes what he views as an anti-Semitic remark: "You  
> know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, 'Did  
> you eat yet or what?' And Tom Christie said, 'No, JEW?' Not 'Did  
> you?'...JEW eat? JEW? You get it? JEW eat?"
>
> I would suggest that many (most?) younger speakers of American  
> English have lost the use of present perfect to describe a past  
> action that has present relevance. The form is still used to refer  
> to an action that started in the past but continues in the present  
> ("I have lived here for twenty years"), where other languages use  
> the present tense.
>
> Bob Rothstein
>
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