everybody...their

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:53 PM -0400 4/20/01, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>>>"A player has to be responsible for their actions in this league." --
>>>>>Ernie Grunfeld
>>
>>>"No mother should be forced by federal prosecutors to testify against
>>>their child." -- Monica Lewinsky's mother's attorney
>
>And to complete the 3rd-person singular paradigm, I heard on the idiot box
>last night ("Animal Planet") [exact wording not guaranteed]:
>
>"Remember this when you leave your pet to make their own entertainment." --
>narrator [showing 'candid' videos of pets engaged in solitary play]

Nice.  I'm sure you're right (as you diagnose it below)--"its" is
just too...well, im"personal" for Animal Planet, especially when the
discussion has to do with entertainment rather than, say, litter
changing.  But I'm not sure why you assume either the X's own
construction or the more standard Xself reflexive "would not tend to
require gender or number marking" in English.  True enough, the "se"
or "si" reflexive clitic in Romance, or "sich" in German, doesn't
distinguish gender/number, but the English reflexives certainly mark
for both gender and number.  Am I missing something?

larry

>
>Looks like a reflexive pronoun to me, genitive/possessive in these three
>examples. A reflexive pronoun would not tend to require gender or number
>marking.
>
>However, the motivation in the TV example might be related to the question
>of whether (in the context) the animal is worthy of "his"/"her" rather than
>"its".
>
>-- Doug Wilson