Who's diddling and how?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 7/16/2008 01:24 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>To return to the original query.
>
>Try this X-rated thought experiment on your wise-ass students (18
>and over only, please!).

An insufficient poll, due to one limitation in its wording.

Imagine you're walking along an isolated forest path. You turn a
corner and discover, to your surprise, a naked couple "doing it" in
some semblance of a female on top position.  Now imagine that "X" in
the following sentences stands for the "f-word."  Which of the
following exclamations is most likely to be produced by your brain?
(No other exclamation allowed for the present purpose.):

A. "Omigod! They're Xing!"
B. "Omigod! He's Xing her!"
C. "Omigod! She's Xing him!"

I wonder if C would move up past B, or perhaps -- depending on how
religiously fundamentalist the thinker is -- even past A.

Joel

>
>Imagine you're walking along an isolated forest path. You turn a
>corner and discover, to your surprise, a naked couple "doing it" in
>the some semblance of either the missionary or canine-related
>position.  Now imagine that "X" in the following sentences stands
>for the "f-word."  Which of the following exclamations is most
>likely to be produced by your brain? (No other exclamation allowed
>for the present purpose.):
>
>A. "Omigod! They're Xing!"
>B. "Omigod! He's Xing her!"
>C. "Omigod! She's Xing him!"
>
>I strongly suspect that this is the order in which the utterances
>will in most cases occur to them. I further predict that, when time
>machines become inexpensive and practicable, you will find that most
>speakers you test going back to the 16th C. (and earlier if you
>replace the "f-word" with a period synonym like "swive") will yield
>comparable results.
>
>Choice C seems to me unlikely in this situation, but hardly
>"ungrammatical" or even grammatically (as opposed to psychologically) peculiar.
>
>My belief based on HDAS exx., etc.: Such verbs most typically take
>masculine subjects (for what I believe are obvious physiological
>reasons), but in appropriate contexts feminine subjects are also idomatic.
>
>JL
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