On the antiquity of "they/them/their" as common gender

[Peter A. McGraw]

I assume that when you say "most," you're excluding the Indo-European
family, right?  Every Germanic, Romance or Slavic language I have at least
a nodding acquaintance with maintains at least a masc./fem. distinction in
its singular pronouns.

Peter Mc.

--On Saturday, May 19, 2001 9:38 PM -0700 Rudolph C Troike
<rtroike at U.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:

> It has always amused me that we hang on so tenaciously to the
> archaic masc/fem/neut distinction in singular pronouns (not distinguished
> in most other languages)



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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu