[Ads-l] The New Yorker Comma Queen on "they", part II
Benjamin Barrett
mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM
Sat Apr 2 20:51:19 UTC 2016
“But not us”? Hmmm. Well it seems the queen has accepted normal pronoun case usage. She will probably come around on number as well. BB
> On 2 Apr 2016, at 13:46, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-the-singular-their-part-two-a-gender-neutral-pronoun <http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-the-singular-their-part-two-a-gender-neutral-pronoun>
>
> Following her earlier piece in which the self-anointed Queen of the Comma reveals her queasiness with third-person singular "they"/"their" forms, Mary Norris now addresses the outcome of our vote at the January ADS, bringing up the usual reductio: If you call a person of fluid gender "they", how in the world are you to determine whether the agreement is singular or plural:
>
> (at 0:55 of video)
> Well, what *would* you say? Would you say "They *is* here", or "They *are* here"?
>
> Good question. I'm sure the Queen stays up nights as it is worrying about her *second* person singular agreement, now that "thou" has disappeared from the language: What is she to say each time she speaks to a singular addressee? "You *is* here" or "You *are* here"? Or, since she's both a Queen (hence entitled to partake in the royal "we") and an editor (entitled to partake in the editorial "we"), would she say "We *is* not amused" or "We *are* not amused?
>
> In fact, in that earlier piece (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-the-singular-their <http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-the-singular-their>), in bravely taking a stand against "Everyone took their seat" against the weak-kneed legions, the Queen does employ the royal and/or editorial "we" and somehow works out for herself (or for themself?) the verb agreement. Distinguishing herself from her American Copy Editors Society (ACES) fellows, she writes:
>
> Many ACES stalwarts—copy editors, journalists, grammarians, lexicographers, and linguists—stand ready to embrace the singular “their.” But not us. We avoid it whenever we can.
>
> I wonder how difficult it was for her to decide on "We avoid it whenever it can" over "We avoids it..."
>
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