[lg policy] The gender-neutral pronoun: after 150 years still an epic fail

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

The gender-neutral pronoun: grammatical necessity, consciousness  
raiser, and after 150 years still an epic fail

Every once in a while some concerned citizen decides to do something  
about the fact that English has no gender-neutral pronoun. They either  
call for such a pronoun to be invented, or they invent one and  
champion its adoption. Wordsmiths have been coining gender-neutral  
pronouns for a century and a half, all to no avail. Coiners of these  
new words insist that the gender-neutral pronoun is indispensable, but  
users of English stalwartly reject, ridicule, or just ignore their  
proposals.

read the whole post on the Web of Language:  http://bit.ly/weblan


____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage








-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20100802/83e6e68f/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list