negative payload "he"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:09 AM -0700 9/21/05, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>--On Wednesday, September 21, 2005 10:56 AM -0500 Jim Parish
><jparish at SIUE.EDU> wrote:
>
>>Jonathan Lighter asked:
>>>Republican Congressman Clay Shaw of Florida knows that Jeb Bush is
>>>Governor. So what could have led him to say on Fox News about five
>>>minutes ago, in regard to Hurrican Rita,
>>>
>>>"In Florida we had a governor who knew what they were doing"  ?
>>
>>My guess is that there's an implicit contrast with Louisiana Governor
>>Kathleen Blanco:
>>"In Louisiana they had a governor who didn't know what *(he was)/they were
>>doing."
>
>
>???
>What would be wrong with, "In Florida we had a governor who knew what he
>was doing," and, "In Louisiana we had a governor who didn't know what she
>was doing"?  Implicit contrast has nothing to do with it, dearie.
>
I think Jim's point, with which I agree, was that this was the most
economical way Rep. Shaw could think of to make the contrastive point
without using sex-neutral "he".  I don't necessarily agree with
either his politics or his grammar, but his motivation was basically
to say:

"In Florida [unlike Louisiana] we had a governor who knew what pro was doing"

where pro = he would presumably be reserved for [+male] referents
(including Bush but not Blanco) and pro = he or she would perhaps be
possible but less folksy.

I think implicit contrast has everything to do with it.  The whole
point of the utterance was to contrast Jeb's "competence" with
Blanco's "incompetence".  Again, not my reading of the situation on
the ground, just my reading of the utterance and its motivation.

Larry