Singular they
Encyclopedia
Singular they is the use of they (or its inflected
forms, such as them or their) to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability. It occurs in two main situations:
(63) a. If anybody shows up, tell them to wait.
Talmy Givón, Syntax: an introduction, Volume 1, Revised edition, (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001), p. 435. ISBN 1-58811-066-4 and can be interpreted as referring to an unspecified individual or to people in general (notwithstanding the fact that "anyone" is strictly grammatically singular).
In some cases, they is used even when both the number and gender of the subject are known, but the identity of the person is generic, e.g. "If some guy beat me up, I'd leave them."
Though semantically
singular or ambiguous, singular they remains morphologically
and syntactically
plural (e.g. it still takes plural forms of verbs).
Epicene they has indeterminate gender:
In neither case is singular they unambiguously a semantic or morpho-syntactic singular. What it actually agrees
with is the plurality implicit in the indeterminacy of generic antecedent
s.
This is explained by David Lewis's
analysis of an aspect of the logic
of the semantics
of natural language
,
now called quantificational variability effect
(QVE).
Broader research in the area is still active, under the name donkey pronoun
s.
In this kind of analysis, singular they in English is typically an example of a semantically bound variable
,
rather than a simple referential pronoun.
It is most clearly evident in the special case of distributive constructions,
where the preference many languages show for singular pronouns probably gives rise to the singular in "singular they".
Steven Pinker
proposes the word they be considered to be a pair of homonym
s — two different words with the same spelling and sound.
Hence, the Shakespeare quote above is semantically distributive, because there's not a man who... is logically equivalent
to every man does not.... Since distributive constructions apply an idea relevant to each individual in the group, rather than to the group as a whole, they are most often conceived of as singular, and a singular pronoun is used.
However, English is typical as many languages show ambivalence in this regard. Because distribution also requires a group with more than one member, plural forms are sometimes used.
The Shakespeare quote is probably an example of such a usage. The alternative would be that he intended epicene they in agreement with generic man, including women.
Many clear examples of the plural being used in other languages, and coming into English by translation, are found in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible
, which attempted to be very literal. For example, Philippians
2:3 has a plural pronoun (ἑαυτῶν) in the Greek
, rendered "themselves" in the KJV. The fact that singular forms are, nonetheless, more natural in distributive constructions is inadvertently demonstrated by websites that, not having access to the original languages in these cases, assume singular interpretations of they in what are actually translations of plurals.
English is typical among many languages because it forms distributives with pronouns and marks for singular and plural. Such languages demonstrate a preference for singular pronouns but attest plurals in a substantial minority of cases. Both forms being comprehensible to native speakers, usage depends on context, clarity, style and logic (for logic, see below).
Strunk and White's The Elements of Style
notes both uses.
This is a semantic assessment (note the words "inaccuracy", "implying", "requires", "justification" and "intention"),
rather than a syntactic linguistic prescription
(as some have, rather loosely, claimed).
Prescriptions of taste are not true or false, so they cannot be proven right or wrong;
however, claims regarding accuracy can be demonstrated to be true or false.
Strunk and White have been proven wrong on this point by logical analysis of quantification in natural language (like Pinker following Lewis and others above) — distributive expressions are neither exclusively singular nor exclusively plural, they are typically indeterminate in number.
and universal
statements, which are marked in English by phrases like there is or words like all. However, there are different types of quantification marked by other words like many, more and most. Quantification is also apparent in language referring to time, marked by words like always, often, sometimes, once or never.
Apart from quantifiers that refer to a unique singularity, like there is and once, they necessarily imply a distributive concept: multiple similar things. Even in the case of there is and once, logical analysis views many of these as distributive statements equivalent to, out of all cases there is at least one. Hence literature seeking to explain quantification in natural language (λx in Montague grammar
) often refers to distributive constructions, and vice versa.
representations of natural language.
In their metalanguage
, quantifiers are applied over the "domain
" (or "restriction") of a variable. Where natural language speakers use word
s or clitic
s to signal generalizations, language analysts define what they call variables that range over any element of the set of members of a group — the domain. Consider the examples of
The symbol, b, is used to represent a variable that can refer to any boy (the elements of the set of all boys, B). The upside-down A is a standard symbol for the universal quantifier — for all, for each or for every in natural language. In predicate logic
, the truth-value of the proposition expressed above in a formal language does not depend on the particular value of the variable, b. This matches our natural language understanding. Whether or not every good boy deserves fruit doesn't depend on any particular boy. Because the truth-value of the proposition doesn't depend on the value of the variable, the variable is called bound
. If, however, there is no quantifier, the variable is called free, and the truth-value of the proposition depends on the value of the variable. This also matches natural language. Whether Adam is bad or deserves fruit depends on Adam.
The concept of free and bound variables arose in logic well before Quine discussed its relevance to the English language. Although the distinction may seem technical to native speakers of many languages, it is quite the reverse among the 250 or so autochthon
ous Australian languages. RMW Dixon describes how, historically, Australian languages show evidence of nouns inflecting on ergative, and bound pronouns on accusative patterns.
Only later did free pronouns enter common usage, and then only sparingly, for emphasis. Gradually, the free pronouns shifted from accusative inflection to ergative, since they have come to be perceived by speakers as a special kind of proper name. Dixon offers the Warlpiri language
as a representative example.
Pinker argues that usage of singular they in English cannot be condemned on grammatical grounds, because it is probably better understood as a linguistic marker of a bound variable rather than as a pronoun with a referent. "On logical grounds, then, variables are not the same thing as the more familiar 'referential' pronouns that trigger number agreement." He gives the following example.
Pinker's example demonstrates the acceptability of plural forms in distributive constructions:
However, additional issues are raised by the attested usage of the logically equivalent alternative constructions of this distributive expression, using:
Generic he is still current English usage, though the gender neutral language
movement discourages this use.
However, in some of these sentences, there is a component of pluralness in the meaning of "they".
Of the example from Shaw, the Merriam-Webster
Dictionary of English Usage (1989) states:
"It would be a violation of English idiom to use a singular pronoun in [that] sentence (But he does get killed) on the assumption that because no man is singular in form and governs a singular verb, it must take a singular pronoun in reference. Notional agreement is in control, and its dictates must be followed."
In other words, no man is syntactically singular, demonstrated by taking the singular form goes; however, it is semantically plural (all go [to kill] not to be killed), hence idiomatically requiring generic or plural (not singular) they.
Despite such use of they by admired writers for many centuries, many Americans avoid use of they to refer to a singular antecedent out of respect for a purported grammatical rule. A majority of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
usage panel generally claimed to "reject the use of they with singular antecedents," though this depended on the context and the semantics of the individual sentence; thus 82% of the panelists found the sentence "The typical student in the program takes about six years to complete their course work" to be unacceptable, but 64% accepted No one is willing to work for those wages anymore, are they? in informal speech.
A study has also shown that reading time of they increased significantly when used with a gender-determinate antecedent, suggesting that such use can confuse.
Both generic he and generic they have long histories of use, and both are still used. However, both are also systematically avoided by particular groups. Style guides that avoid expressing a preference for either approach recommend recasting generic expressions as plurals to avoid the criticisms of either party.
Irrespective of the debate, when used, generic they can be seen to have an implication of indefinite reference (indefinite number or indefinite gender). It is most commonly used with indefinite referents of a distributive nature such as someone, anyone, everyone, and no one. Such references are not to one particular person but to a large group taken one at a time, causing influence from the implied plural.
, English personal pronouns
are typically used to refer backward or forward within a sentence to a noun phrase
(which may be a simple noun
).
Plural
Generic (indeterminate number)
Singular
In the middle two of these example sentences, traditional grammars speak of the pronoun referring to a good student. However, following analysis by Quine
, writers like Lewis (above) understand structures involving generic antecedents to be a logically distinct class. Pinker notes the pronouns are not in fact referring to anything in particular. Geoffrey Pullum
uses the logic
al, rather than grammatical, term bound variable
to describe such expressions.
Irrespective of how such cases are explained grammatically, however, both are well-formed English sentences. Both are attested in English literature prior to the 20th century, and both are still attested in 21st century English.
Singular they, although morphologically
a plural pronoun, is often used in those circumstances when an indefinite number is signified by an indefinite singular antecedent; for example,
This is analogous to the pronoun you, which originally was only plural, but by about 1700 replaced thou for singular referents, while retaining the plural verb form. Some uses of singular they follow a grammatical rule whereby singular indefinite antecedents (such as everyone, anyone, no one, and all) are followed by a coordinate or independent clause containing the plural pronoun 'they'. The plural reflexive form themselves is used as well; with some speakers using the singular form themself, in particular with semantically singular they.
Even when the gender is known, they is sometimes found with a generic referent. For example: "A teenage boy rarely thinks about their future." A teenage boy rarely thinks about his future is more likely in formal writing.
Many other modern uses follow the prescription of gender-neutral English in the style manuals of various organizations. As the syntactically singular third-person pronouns of English are all either gender-specific (he and she) or inappropriate for reference to people (it), singular they is also often used where the sex of the referent is either unknown or irrelevant:
. One response to this was an increase in the use of generic she in academic journal articles from around this time. However, the more common response has been prescriptive, with many institutions publishing gender neutral style guides, notably in government, academia and publishing. For example, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004) expresses several preferences. "Generic/universal their provides a gender-free pronoun, avoiding the exclusive his and the clumsy his/her."
The use of masculine generic nouns and pronouns in written and spoken language has decreased since the 1960s. In a corpus of spontaneous speech collected in Australia in the 1990s, singular they had become the most frequently used generic pronoun. The increased usage of singular they may be at least partly due to an increasing desire for gender-neutral language
; while writers a hundred years ago might have had no qualm using he with a referent of indeterminate gender, writers today often feel uncomfortable with this. One solution in formal writing has often been to write he or she, or something similar, but this is considered awkward when used excessively, overly politically correct
, or both.
In certain contexts, singular they may sound less obtrusive and more natural than generic he, or he or she. One guide offered the following example:
Some grammar and usage guides have accepted singular uses of they, in cases limited to references to an indeterminate person. For example, A person might find themself in a fix is considered standard English
, but not Dr. Brown might find themself in a fix. For the latter, the most usual circumlocutions are: recasting the sentence in the plural (Doctors might find themselves...), second person (If you're a doctor, you might find yourself...), or sometimes reflexive (One might find oneself …). Singular they is occasionally used to refer to an indeterminate person whose gender is known, as in No mother should be forced to testify against their child.
Some college handbooks, such as The Little, Brown Handbook, continue to view singular they as grammatically inconsistent, and recommend either recasting in the plural or avoiding the pronoun altogether. Others say that there is no sufficient reason not to extend singular they to include specific people of unknown gender, as well as to gender non-conforming
, bigender
, intersexual and androgyne people, and those who do not identify exclusively with either gender.
Some manuals of style remain neutral on the subject while other style manuals explicitly reject the use of singular they in grammar. According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Society, a pronoun must agree in both gender and number with the noun it replaces. The APA manual offers the following example as incorrect reflexive usage:
while also specifically taking a stand that generic he is unacceptable (p. 66). The APA recommends using he or she, recasting the sentence with a plural subject to allow correct use of they, or simply rewriting the sentence to avoid issues with gender or number.
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) also maintains that pronouns must agree in number, and that the singular they is incorrect usage.
Consensus among linguists
is that any judgement on the singular they is a matter of prescriptive grammar
, not a description of proper language form or syntax. The evolution of originally-plural you as a replacement for the singular thou
in early Modern English is an example of a similar shift. Current debate relates to not only grammar
but also to wider questions of political correctness
and equal rights
, and in particular, the extent to which language influences thought
.
Regarding usage, The Chicago Manual of Style
notes:
With the 14th edition (1993), the Manual briefly revised its neutral stance to actually recommend "singular use of they and their", noting a "revival" of this usage and citing "its venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare." However, regret regarding that printing is expressed at its website; and with the current 15th edition (2003), it has returned to its original neutral position.
The 2011 translation of the New International Version
Bible
utilizes singular they instead of "he" or "he or she", reflecting changes in English usage. The translators commissioned a study of modern English usage and determined that singular "they" ("them"/"their") is by far the most common way that English-language speakers and writers today refer back to singular antecedents such as "whoever, anyone, somebody, a person, no one, and the like."
, which uses the word nork both as an indeterminate pronoun meaning "who" and also as a marker in distributive constructions.
Basque is far from the only example of this. S.-Y. Kuroda
considers it typical of East Asia
n languages, Japanese
and Korean
in particular. Yet other languages have even more particular ways of expressing distribution and quantification
. Sumerian
, structurally similar to Basque, uses a nominal suffix, dedli, to indicate "each individual". Some suggest that such a linguistic dispute is typical of Indo-European languages, especially Slavic languages such as Russian and Bulgarian where the system of singular and plural nouns is quite complex.
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
forms, such as them or their) to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability. It occurs in two main situations:
- Indeterminate genderGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
– when they refers to an individual person of unknown sex, as in, for example, "One student failed their exam". This usage is known as epicene they.
- Indeterminate numberGrammatical numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
– when they has no definite antecedentAntecedent (grammar)In grammar, an antecedent is a noun, noun phrase, or clause to which an anaphor refers in a coreference. For example, in the passage "I did not see John because he wasn't there", "John" is the antecedent of the anaphor "he"; together "John" and "he" are called a coreference because they both refer...
, or can be interpreted as referring to either a singular or plural entity. This usage is also known as generic they. For example, in "Anyone who thinks they have been affected should contact their doctor", they and their are within the scope of the universal, distributive quantifierQuantificationQuantification has several distinct senses. In mathematics and empirical science, it is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into members of some set of numbers. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.In logic,...
anyone,
(63) a. If anybody shows up, tell them to wait.
- b. If anybody did that, they'd be insane."
Talmy Givón, Syntax: an introduction, Volume 1, Revised edition, (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001), p. 435. ISBN 1-58811-066-4 and can be interpreted as referring to an unspecified individual or to people in general (notwithstanding the fact that "anyone" is strictly grammatically singular).
In some cases, they is used even when both the number and gender of the subject are known, but the identity of the person is generic, e.g. "If some guy beat me up, I'd leave them."
Though semantically
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
singular or ambiguous, singular they remains morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
and syntactically
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
plural (e.g. it still takes plural forms of verbs).
Summary
Generic they has indeterminate number:- There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend — ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, The Comedy of ErrorsThe Comedy of ErrorsThe Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors is one of only two of Shakespeare's...
, Act IV, Scene 3 (1594)
Epicene they has indeterminate gender:
- "It can't be true what the girls at the RectoryRectoryA rectory is the residence, or former residence, of a rector, most often a Christian cleric, but in some cases an academic rector or other person with that title...
said, that her mother was an opera-dancer—"
"A person can't help their birth," Rosalind replied with great liberality. — ThackerayWilliam Makepeace ThackerayWilliam Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
, Vanity Fair (1848)#Becky Sharp|Becky Sharp]]. Thackeray has Rosalind using their as a polite circumlocutionCircumlocutionCircumlocution is an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech...
, perhaps avoiding the directness of she ... her, and generic his in a context involving only women; or perhaps with Rosalind meaning the statement to apply to people in general with Becky Sharp as an example.)
In neither case is singular they unambiguously a semantic or morpho-syntactic singular. What it actually agrees
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
with is the plurality implicit in the indeterminacy of generic antecedent
Generic antecedent
Generic antecedents are representatives of classes, referred to in ordinary language by another word , in a situation in which gender is typically unknown or irrelevant. These mostly arise in generalizations and are particularly common in abstract, theoretical or strategic discourse...
s.
This is explained by David Lewis's
David Kellogg Lewis
David Kellogg Lewis was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...
analysis of an aspect of the logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
of the semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
of natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
,
now called quantificational variability effect
Quantificational variability effect
Quantificational variability effect is the intuitive equivalence of certain sentences with quantificational adverbs and sentences without these, but with quantificational determiner phrases in argument position instead....
(QVE).
Broader research in the area is still active, under the name donkey pronoun
Donkey pronoun
A donkey pronoun is a pronoun that is bound in semantics but not syntax.Some writers prefer the term donkey anaphora, since it is the referential aspects and discourse or syntactic context that are of interest to researchers . The terms d-type or e-type pronoun are also used, mutually exclusively,...
s.
In this kind of analysis, singular they in English is typically an example of a semantically bound variable
Free variables and bound variables
In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a free variable is a notation that specifies places in an expression where substitution may take place...
,
rather than a simple referential pronoun.
It is most clearly evident in the special case of distributive constructions,
where the preference many languages show for singular pronouns probably gives rise to the singular in "singular they".
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
proposes the word they be considered to be a pair of homonym
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
s — two different words with the same spelling and sound.
- Those ladies over there are wearing their[1] best clothes.
[ definiteDefinitenessIn grammatical theory, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....
, plural, referring pronoun] - On a day like today, anyone would want to wear their[2] best clothes. [indefinite, generic and epicene, non-referring anaphor]
Distribution
Distributive constructions apply a single idea to multiple members of a group, hence involving both singularities (the idea, the group, each individual member, and the relation of idea to member) and pluralities (the members and the repeated relation). They are typically marked in English by words like each, every and any. The simplest examples are applied to groups of two, and use words like either and or—"Would you like tea or coffee" (you like distributed over tea and coffee). Thorough analysis of distribution requires treatment of negation.Hence, the Shakespeare quote above is semantically distributive, because there's not a man who... is logically equivalent
Logical equivalence
In logic, statements p and q are logically equivalent if they have the same logical content.Syntactically, p and q are equivalent if each can be proved from the other...
to every man does not.... Since distributive constructions apply an idea relevant to each individual in the group, rather than to the group as a whole, they are most often conceived of as singular, and a singular pronoun is used.
- England expects that every man will do his dutyEngland expects that every man will do his duty"England expects that every man will do his duty" was a signal sent by Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson from his flagship HMS Victory as the Battle of Trafalgar was about to commence on 21 October 1805. Trafalgar was the decisive naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars...
. — NelsonHoratio Nelson, 1st Viscount NelsonHoratio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of...
(1806) - Every dog hath his day.
- — John RayJohn RayJohn Ray was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".He published important works on botany,...
, A Collection of English Proverbs, 1670 - originally from PlutarchPlutarchPlutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, Moralia, c. 95 AD, regarding the death of EuripidesEuripidesEuripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
However, English is typical as many languages show ambivalence in this regard. Because distribution also requires a group with more than one member, plural forms are sometimes used.
The Shakespeare quote is probably an example of such a usage. The alternative would be that he intended epicene they in agreement with generic man, including women.
Many clear examples of the plural being used in other languages, and coming into English by translation, are found in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, which attempted to be very literal. For example, Philippians
Epistle to the Philippians
The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, usually referred to simply as Philippians, is the eleventh book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was written by St. Paul to the church of Philippi, an early center of Christianity in Greece around 62 A.D. Other scholars argue for an...
2:3 has a plural pronoun (ἑαυτῶν) in the Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
, rendered "themselves" in the KJV. The fact that singular forms are, nonetheless, more natural in distributive constructions is inadvertently demonstrated by websites that, not having access to the original languages in these cases, assume singular interpretations of they in what are actually translations of plurals.
English is typical among many languages because it forms distributives with pronouns and marks for singular and plural. Such languages demonstrate a preference for singular pronouns but attest plurals in a substantial minority of cases. Both forms being comprehensible to native speakers, usage depends on context, clarity, style and logic (for logic, see below).
Strunk and White's The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
notes both uses.
A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man, which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. Similar to this, but with even less justification, is the use of the plural pronoun with the antecedent anybody, any one, somebody, some one, the intention being either to avoid the awkward he or she, or to avoid committing oneself to either. Some bashful speakers even say, A friend of mine told me that they ...
This is a semantic assessment (note the words "inaccuracy", "implying", "requires", "justification" and "intention"),
rather than a syntactic linguistic prescription
Linguistic prescription
In linguistics, prescription denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct...
(as some have, rather loosely, claimed).
Prescriptions of taste are not true or false, so they cannot be proven right or wrong;
however, claims regarding accuracy can be demonstrated to be true or false.
Strunk and White have been proven wrong on this point by logical analysis of quantification in natural language (like Pinker following Lewis and others above) — distributive expressions are neither exclusively singular nor exclusively plural, they are typically indeterminate in number.
Quantification
The simplest examples of quantification are existentialExistential quantification
In predicate logic, an existential quantification is the predication of a property or relation to at least one member of the domain. It is denoted by the logical operator symbol ∃ , which is called the existential quantifier...
and universal
Universal quantification
In predicate logic, universal quantification formalizes the notion that something is true for everything, or every relevant thing....
statements, which are marked in English by phrases like there is or words like all. However, there are different types of quantification marked by other words like many, more and most. Quantification is also apparent in language referring to time, marked by words like always, often, sometimes, once or never.
Apart from quantifiers that refer to a unique singularity, like there is and once, they necessarily imply a distributive concept: multiple similar things. Even in the case of there is and once, logical analysis views many of these as distributive statements equivalent to, out of all cases there is at least one. Hence literature seeking to explain quantification in natural language (λx in Montague grammar
Montague grammar
Montague grammar is an approach to natural language semantics, named after American logician Richard Montague. The Montague grammar is based on formal logic, especially higher order predicate logic and lambda calculus, and makes use of the notions of intensional logic, via Kripke models...
) often refers to distributive constructions, and vice versa.
Variables
The term variable arises due to the interest mathematicians, logicians, philosophers of language, theoretical linguists and computer language designers have in formal languageFormal language
A formal language is a set of words—that is, finite strings of letters, symbols, or tokens that are defined in the language. The set from which these letters are taken is the alphabet over which the language is defined. A formal language is often defined by means of a formal grammar...
representations of natural language.
In their metalanguage
Metalanguage
Broadly, any metalanguage is language or symbols used when language itself is being discussed or examined. In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to make statements about statements in another language...
, quantifiers are applied over the "domain
Domain of discourse
In the formal sciences, the domain of discourse, also called the universe of discourse , is the set of entities over which certain variables of interest in some formal treatment may range...
" (or "restriction") of a variable. Where natural language speakers use word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
s or clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s to signal generalizations, language analysts define what they call variables that range over any element of the set of members of a group — the domain. Consider the examples of
- natural language — Every good boy deserves fruit; and
- formal language —
The symbol, b, is used to represent a variable that can refer to any boy (the elements of the set of all boys, B). The upside-down A is a standard symbol for the universal quantifier — for all, for each or for every in natural language. In predicate logic
Predicate logic
In mathematical logic, predicate logic is the generic term for symbolic formal systems like first-order logic, second-order logic, many-sorted logic or infinitary logic. This formal system is distinguished from other systems in that its formulae contain variables which can be quantified...
, the truth-value of the proposition expressed above in a formal language does not depend on the particular value of the variable, b. This matches our natural language understanding. Whether or not every good boy deserves fruit doesn't depend on any particular boy. Because the truth-value of the proposition doesn't depend on the value of the variable, the variable is called bound
Free variables and bound variables
In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a free variable is a notation that specifies places in an expression where substitution may take place...
. If, however, there is no quantifier, the variable is called free, and the truth-value of the proposition depends on the value of the variable. This also matches natural language. Whether Adam is bad or deserves fruit depends on Adam.
The concept of free and bound variables arose in logic well before Quine discussed its relevance to the English language. Although the distinction may seem technical to native speakers of many languages, it is quite the reverse among the 250 or so autochthon
Indigenous language
An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations...
ous Australian languages. RMW Dixon describes how, historically, Australian languages show evidence of nouns inflecting on ergative, and bound pronouns on accusative patterns.
Only later did free pronouns enter common usage, and then only sparingly, for emphasis. Gradually, the free pronouns shifted from accusative inflection to ergative, since they have come to be perceived by speakers as a special kind of proper name. Dixon offers the Warlpiri language
Warlpiri language
The Warlpiri language is spoken by about 3000 of the Warlpiri people in Australia's Northern Territory. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, and is one of the largest aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of speakers.-...
as a representative example.
Pinker argues that usage of singular they in English cannot be condemned on grammatical grounds, because it is probably better understood as a linguistic marker of a bound variable rather than as a pronoun with a referent. "On logical grounds, then, variables are not the same thing as the more familiar 'referential' pronouns that trigger number agreement." He gives the following example.
Pinker's example demonstrates the acceptability of plural forms in distributive constructions:
- plural they — Everyone returned to their seats.
However, additional issues are raised by the attested usage of the logically equivalent alternative constructions of this distributive expression, using:
- generic they — Everyone returned to their seat, or
- generic he — Everyone returned to his seat.
Generic he
Modern codification of the rule in English can be found in the mid 18th century with Anne Fisher's A New Grammar, generic use of the pronoun he has been preferred (but not required) in such constructions by many contemporary grammar and usage books. For example, an 1896 grammar notes:Examples of generic he
- Who of thise wormes shall be byten, He must have triacle; Yf not that, he shall deye. — CaxtonWilliam CaxtonWilliam Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
, Dialogues in French and English. (c. 1484) - Every person who turns this page has his own little diary. — Thackeray
- Suppose the life and fortune of every one of us would depend on his winning or losing a game of chess. — Thomas Huxley, 'A Liberal Education' (1868)
- If any one did not know it, it was his own fault. — George Washington CableGeorge Washington CableGeorge Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana. His fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner.- Biography:...
, Old Creole Days (1879) - Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. — Universal Declaration of Human RightsUniversal Declaration of Human RightsThe Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
(1948) - It would not be as if the lone astronaut would be completely by himself. — Nancy Atkinson, "A One Way One Person Mission to Mars" (4 March 2008)
- Kitchen table issues ... are ones the next president can actually do something about if he actually cares about it. More likely if she cares about it!” — Hillary Rodham ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonHillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...
, presidential campaign rally (12 May 2008)
Generic he is still current English usage, though the gender neutral language
Gender-neutral language in English
Gender neutrality in English is a form of linguistic prescriptivism that aims at using a form of English that minimizes assumptions about the gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech.-Rationale:...
movement discourages this use.
Generic they
Generic he has been a preference in usage, not a binding grammatical "rule", as Thackeray's use of both forms demonstrates. "The alternative to the masculine generic with the longest and most distinguished history in English is the third-person plural pronoun. Recognized writers have used they, them, themselves, and their to refer to singular nouns such as one, a person, an individual, and each since the 1300s."Examples of generic they
- Eche of theym sholde ... make theymselfe redy. — CaxtonWilliam CaxtonWilliam Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
, Sonnes of Aymon (c. 1489) - Arise; one knocks. / ... / Hark, how they knock! — Shakespeare, Romeo and JulietRomeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
(c. 1595) - 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech. — Shakespeare, HamletHamletThe Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
- I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly. — AustenJane AustenJane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
, Mansfield ParkMansfield Park (novel)Mansfield Park is a novel by Jane Austen, written at Chawton Cottage between 1812 and 1814. It was published in July 1814 by Thomas Egerton, who published Jane Austen's two earlier novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice...
(1814) - That's always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. — Mark TwainMark TwainSamuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, Adventures of Huckleberry FinnAdventures of Huckleberry FinnAdventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
(1884) - Caesar: "No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed." / Cleopatra: "But they do get killed". — ShawGeorge Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Caesar and CleopatraCaesar and Cleopatra (play)Caesar and Cleopatra, a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw, was first staged in 1901 and first published with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's Disciple in his 1901 collection, Three Plays for Puritans. It was first performed at Newcastle-on-Tyne on March 15, 1899...
(1901)
However, in some of these sentences, there is a component of pluralness in the meaning of "they".
Of the example from Shaw, the Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster
Merriam–Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language .Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a...
Dictionary of English Usage (1989) states:
"It would be a violation of English idiom to use a singular pronoun in [that] sentence (But he does get killed) on the assumption that because no man is singular in form and governs a singular verb, it must take a singular pronoun in reference. Notional agreement is in control, and its dictates must be followed."
In other words, no man is syntactically singular, demonstrated by taking the singular form goes; however, it is semantically plural (all go [to kill] not to be killed), hence idiomatically requiring generic or plural (not singular) they.
Despite such use of they by admired writers for many centuries, many Americans avoid use of they to refer to a singular antecedent out of respect for a purported grammatical rule. A majority of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is an American dictionary of the English language published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969...
usage panel generally claimed to "reject the use of they with singular antecedents," though this depended on the context and the semantics of the individual sentence; thus 82% of the panelists found the sentence "The typical student in the program takes about six years to complete their course work" to be unacceptable, but 64% accepted No one is willing to work for those wages anymore, are they? in informal speech.
A study has also shown that reading time of they increased significantly when used with a gender-determinate antecedent, suggesting that such use can confuse.
Both generic he and generic they have long histories of use, and both are still used. However, both are also systematically avoided by particular groups. Style guides that avoid expressing a preference for either approach recommend recasting generic expressions as plurals to avoid the criticisms of either party.
Irrespective of the debate, when used, generic they can be seen to have an implication of indefinite reference (indefinite number or indefinite gender). It is most commonly used with indefinite referents of a distributive nature such as someone, anyone, everyone, and no one. Such references are not to one particular person but to a large group taken one at a time, causing influence from the implied plural.
Grammatical analysis
According to the traditional analysisTraditional grammar
In linguistics, a traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of language. Traditional grammars are commonly used in language education.Concepts treated in traditional grammars include:* subject* predicate* object...
, English personal pronouns
English personal pronouns
The personal pronouns in the English language can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little noun or adjective inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns...
are typically used to refer backward or forward within a sentence to a noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
(which may be a simple noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
).
| Nominative Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments... (subject) |
Accusative Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... (object) |
Prenominal possessive Possessive adjective Possessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something... |
Predicative possessive Possessive pronoun A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively... |
Reflexive Reflexive pronoun A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent... |
|
| He He He is a third-person, singular personal pronoun in Modern English, as well as being a personal pronoun in Middle English.-Animals:... |
He laughs. | I hug him. | His hair grows. | I use his. | He feeds himself. |
| She She She is the third person singular, feminine, nominative case pronoun in modern English.She can also may refer to:-Literature and film:* She: A History of Adventure, a novel by H... |
She laughs. | I hug her. | Her hair grows. | I use hers. | She feeds herself. |
| Prototypical they They They is thethird-person pluralpersonal pronoun in Modern English.-Usage:The "singular" they is the use of this pronoun as a gender-neutral singular rather than as a plural pronoun. The correctness of this usage is disputed.... |
When my kids watch "The Simpsons", they laugh. | Whether they win or lose, I hug them. | As long as people live, their hair grows. | Most of my friends have cell phones, so I use theirs. | The children feed themselves. |
| Singular they | When I tell someone a joke they laugh. | When I greet a friend I hug them. | When someone does not get a haircut, their hair grows long. | If my mobile phone runs out of power, a friend that I am with lets me borrow theirs. | Each child feeds themself. |
| Generic he | When I tell someone a joke he laughs. | When I greet a friend I hug him. | When someone does not get a haircut, his hair grows long. | If my mobile phone runs out of power, a friend that I am with lets me borrow his. | Each child feeds himself. |
Plural
- All good students do their homework.
Generic (indeterminate number)
- A good student is known for doing his homework OR
- A good student is known for doing their homework
Singular
- Mary is known for doing her homework
In the middle two of these example sentences, traditional grammars speak of the pronoun referring to a good student. However, following analysis by Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
, writers like Lewis (above) understand structures involving generic antecedents to be a logically distinct class. Pinker notes the pronouns are not in fact referring to anything in particular. Geoffrey Pullum
Geoffrey Pullum
Geoffrey Keith "Geoff" Pullum is a British-American linguist specialising in the study of English. , he is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh....
uses the logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
al, rather than grammatical, term bound variable
Free variables and bound variables
In mathematics, and in other disciplines involving formal languages, including mathematical logic and computer science, a free variable is a notation that specifies places in an expression where substitution may take place...
to describe such expressions.
Irrespective of how such cases are explained grammatically, however, both are well-formed English sentences. Both are attested in English literature prior to the 20th century, and both are still attested in 21st century English.
Singular they, although morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
a plural pronoun, is often used in those circumstances when an indefinite number is signified by an indefinite singular antecedent; for example,
- The person you mentioned, are they coming?, not
* … is they coming?
This is analogous to the pronoun you, which originally was only plural, but by about 1700 replaced thou for singular referents, while retaining the plural verb form. Some uses of singular they follow a grammatical rule whereby singular indefinite antecedents (such as everyone, anyone, no one, and all) are followed by a coordinate or independent clause containing the plural pronoun 'they'. The plural reflexive form themselves is used as well; with some speakers using the singular form themself, in particular with semantically singular they.
Even when the gender is known, they is sometimes found with a generic referent. For example: "A teenage boy rarely thinks about their future." A teenage boy rarely thinks about his future is more likely in formal writing.
Many other modern uses follow the prescription of gender-neutral English in the style manuals of various organizations. As the syntactically singular third-person pronouns of English are all either gender-specific (he and she) or inappropriate for reference to people (it), singular they is also often used where the sex of the referent is either unknown or irrelevant:
- A child becomes an adult when they turn 18.
- Someone called for you, but they did not leave a message.
Gender-neutral language movement
In the late 20th century, the feminist movement expressed concern regarding the use of generic he in the English language. The feminist claim was that such usage contributes to an assumption that maleness is "standard," and that femaleness is "different". They also claimed that such use is misogynisticMisogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
. One response to this was an increase in the use of generic she in academic journal articles from around this time. However, the more common response has been prescriptive, with many institutions publishing gender neutral style guides, notably in government, academia and publishing. For example, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004) expresses several preferences. "Generic/universal their provides a gender-free pronoun, avoiding the exclusive his and the clumsy his/her."
It avoids gratuitous sexism and gives the statement broadest reference....They, them, their are now freely used in agreement with singular indefinite pronouns and determiners, those with universal implications such as any(one), every(one), no(one), as well as each and some(one), whose reference is often more individual....For those listening or reading, it has become unremarkable—an element of common usage.
The use of masculine generic nouns and pronouns in written and spoken language has decreased since the 1960s. In a corpus of spontaneous speech collected in Australia in the 1990s, singular they had become the most frequently used generic pronoun. The increased usage of singular they may be at least partly due to an increasing desire for gender-neutral language
Gender-neutral language
Gender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate reference to gender in terms that describe people...
; while writers a hundred years ago might have had no qualm using he with a referent of indeterminate gender, writers today often feel uncomfortable with this. One solution in formal writing has often been to write he or she, or something similar, but this is considered awkward when used excessively, overly politically correct
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
, or both.
In certain contexts, singular they may sound less obtrusive and more natural than generic he, or he or she. One guide offered the following example:
Some grammar and usage guides have accepted singular uses of they, in cases limited to references to an indeterminate person. For example, A person might find themself in a fix is considered standard English
Standard English
Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...
, but not Dr. Brown might find themself in a fix. For the latter, the most usual circumlocutions are: recasting the sentence in the plural (Doctors might find themselves...), second person (If you're a doctor, you might find yourself...), or sometimes reflexive (One might find oneself …). Singular they is occasionally used to refer to an indeterminate person whose gender is known, as in No mother should be forced to testify against their child.
Some college handbooks, such as The Little, Brown Handbook, continue to view singular they as grammatically inconsistent, and recommend either recasting in the plural or avoiding the pronoun altogether. Others say that there is no sufficient reason not to extend singular they to include specific people of unknown gender, as well as to gender non-conforming
Gender variance
Gender variance, or gender nonconformity, is behaviour or gender expression that does not conform to dominant gender norms of male and female...
, bigender
Bigender
Bigender, bi-gender or bi+gender describes a tendency to move between feminine and masculine gender-typed behaviour depending on context. Some bigendered individuals express a distinctly "en femme" persona and a distinctly "en homme" persona, feminine and masculine respectively; others have shades...
, intersexual and androgyne people, and those who do not identify exclusively with either gender.
Some manuals of style remain neutral on the subject while other style manuals explicitly reject the use of singular they in grammar. According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Society, a pronoun must agree in both gender and number with the noun it replaces. The APA manual offers the following example as incorrect reflexive usage:
while also specifically taking a stand that generic he is unacceptable (p. 66). The APA recommends using he or she, recasting the sentence with a plural subject to allow correct use of they, or simply rewriting the sentence to avoid issues with gender or number.
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) also maintains that pronouns must agree in number, and that the singular they is incorrect usage.
Consensus among linguists
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
is that any judgement on the singular they is a matter of prescriptive grammar
Linguistic prescription
In linguistics, prescription denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct...
, not a description of proper language form or syntax. The evolution of originally-plural you as a replacement for the singular thou
Thou
The word thou is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee , and the possessive is thy or thine...
in early Modern English is an example of a similar shift. Current debate relates to not only grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
but also to wider questions of political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
and equal rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
, and in particular, the extent to which language influences thought
Linguistic relativity
The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
.
Acceptability
There has been considerable debate as to the acceptability of singular they.Regarding usage, The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
notes:
On the one hand, it is unacceptable to a great many reasonable readers to use the generic masculine pronoun (he) in reference to no one in particular. On the other hand, it is unacceptable to a great many readers either to resort to nontraditional gimmicks to avoid the generic masculine (by using he/she or s/he, for example) or to use they as a kind of singular pronoun. Either way, credibility is lost with some readers.
With the 14th edition (1993), the Manual briefly revised its neutral stance to actually recommend "singular use of they and their", noting a "revival" of this usage and citing "its venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare." However, regret regarding that printing is expressed at its website; and with the current 15th edition (2003), it has returned to its original neutral position.
The 2011 translation of the New International Version
New International Version
The New International Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible. Published by Zondervan in the United States and by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, it has become one of the most popular modern translations in history.-History:...
Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
utilizes singular they instead of "he" or "he or she", reflecting changes in English usage. The translators commissioned a study of modern English usage and determined that singular "they" ("them"/"their") is by far the most common way that English-language speakers and writers today refer back to singular antecedents such as "whoever, anyone, somebody, a person, no one, and the like."
Comparison with other languages
If, following Pinker's proposal, they is considered as a pair of homonyms, this would be analogous to a language like BasqueBasque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, which uses the word nork both as an indeterminate pronoun meaning "who" and also as a marker in distributive constructions.
Basque is far from the only example of this. S.-Y. Kuroda
S.-Y. Kuroda
, aka S.-Y. Kuroda, was Professor Emeritusand Research Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego.Although a pioneer in the application of Chomskyan generative syntax to...
considers it typical of East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n languages, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
in particular. Yet other languages have even more particular ways of expressing distribution and quantification
Quantification
Quantification has several distinct senses. In mathematics and empirical science, it is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into members of some set of numbers. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.In logic,...
. Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
, structurally similar to Basque, uses a nominal suffix, dedli, to indicate "each individual". Some suggest that such a linguistic dispute is typical of Indo-European languages, especially Slavic languages such as Russian and Bulgarian where the system of singular and plural nouns is quite complex.
See also
- Bound variable pronounBound variable pronounA bound variable pronoun is one which has a quantified determiner phrase as its antecedent.- Bibliography :* Hendrick, Randall . "", pages 103–115 in Heinz & Ntelitheos UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 12 [Proceedings of AFLA XII].* . "". Pages 125–240 in Gert Webelhuth . : principles and...
- Gender-neutral language in EnglishGender-neutral language in EnglishGender neutrality in English is a form of linguistic prescriptivism that aims at using a form of English that minimizes assumptions about the gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech.-Rationale:...
- Gender-neutral pronounGender-neutral pronounA gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun that is not associated with any gender. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless...
- Notional agreement, also contested by prescriptivists, used with the generic they.
External links
- "Singular 'Donkey' Pronouns Are Semantically Distributive, Not (Necessarily) Singular".
- Chierchia, GennaroGennaro ChierchiaGennaro Chierchia is Haas Foundation's professor of linguistics at Harvard University, and "one of the world's leading formal semanticists" according to the Harvard Gazette. Prior to appointment to Harvard's faculty, Chierchia was linguistics professor in the psychology department of the University...
. 'Reference to kinds across languages'. Natural Language SemanticsNatural Language SemanticsNatural Language Semantics: An International Journal of Semantics and Its Interfaces in Grammar is a leading international peer-reviewed semantics journal published by Springer Netherlands . It is devoted to semantics and its interfaces in grammar, especially in syntax...
6 (1998): 339–405. - Yamashina, Miyuki and Christopher Tancredi. 'Degenerate Plurals'. In Proceedings of Sinn und BedeutungSense and referenceSinn and bedeutung are usually translated, respectively, as sense and reference. Two different aspects of some terms' meanings, a term's reference is the object that the term refers to, while the term's sense is the way that the term refers to that object.Sinn and bedeutung were introduced by...
9 (2005). Edited by Emar Maier and others. - The Singular "They"
- Singular They and Jane Austen
- Pinker, Steven. Steven Pinker on the English singular "their" construction. From The Language Instinct.
- "Anyone who had a heart (would know their own language)" by Geoff Pullum. Transcript of a radio talk.
- Everyone at The Times agrees ... no they don't Geoffrey Pullum with TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. - Singular "They", Department of Justice, Canada