everybody...their

[Miriam Meyers]

The use of they and its forms with such antecedents is actually about 600 years old.  A number of people have written pieces on this usage and its history.  A couple of my articles are "Current Generic Pronoun Usage:  An Empirical Study," AMERICAN SPEECH 65:3 (Fall 1990) 228-237, and "Forms of they with singular noun phrase antecedents," WORD 44:2 (August 1993) 181-192.  Dennis Baron's GRAMMAR AND GENDER (Yale UP, 1986) treats the usage as well.

Miriam Meyers
Professor, Literature and Language
College of Arts and Sciences
Metropolitan State University
730 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55405-1897
612-341-7258
miriam.meyers at metrostate.edu

>>> pfarr at UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU - 4/17/01 11:09 AM >>>
What about this one?  I have noticed during the past 20-25 years that the
use of "Everybody (everyone, each, somebody, etc...) has THEIR own way of
doing things" has steadily been replacing  "Everybody (etc)....HIS  own
etc" even in "learned discourse"  I attribute this to the influence of the
women's movement in making America more aware and sensitive to sexism in
society in general and in the English language in particular.  I have tried
to use "his/her" (clumsy as it is) as a way to preserve subject-verb
agreement, and I notice some others use "her" as a sort of
overcompensation; but with each passing year I see "their" picking up more
momentum in all corners, even in Academia.  Has this been picked up on any
"official radar?"  Is it in any usage dictionaries yet?  Are there any
other grammar formalists out there who cringe like I do when they hear this?





At 08:40 PM 4/16/01, you wrote:
>At 10:10 AM -0400 4/17/01, P2052 at AOL.COM wrote:
>>A number of the older grammar books/style manuals claim that either
>>acceptable.
>>In The Complete Stylist and Handbook, 3rd ed. (1984), Sheridan acknowledges
>>both a singular and a plural usage; however, he embraces the singular sense
>>of none:  "None of them are, of course is very common.  From Shakespeare's
>>time to ours, it has persisted alongside the more precise none of them is,
>>which seems to have the edge in careful prose, since it follows the structure
>>of English, matching singular with singular" (354).
>
>I find this argument entirely circular and question-begging, besides
>flying in the face of centuries of distinguished usage.
>
>>He cites the following
>>examples:
>>                   FAULTY:  None of these men are failures.
>>                   REVISED:  None of these men is a failure.
>>                   FAULTY:  None of the class, even those best prepared, want
>>the test.
>>                   REVISED:  None of the class, even those best prepared,
>>wants the
>>                                     test.
>>Note that these uses of none are the equivalent of not one.
>
>Actually, I'm not sure that "none" = 'not one' in the second
>example:  "Not one of the class wants the test"?  In any case, this
>equivalence (often used by earlier prescriptivists as a rationale for the
>singular agreement) is a bit of a red herring, since the one case where
>everyone has always used singular agreement, "none of the X" for mass noun
>X, doesn't permit a "not one" paraphrase.
>
>larry