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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (3214)	7/22/1999 5:32:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

"....this is another older usage temporarily mislaid and now being rediscovered..." Not really, Christopher. That is, I think you have misunderstood what "the singular use of they" really refers to. In the first place, what is usually meant is "the singular use of their," with pronomial antecedents like "everybody." More rarely do you get the "singular use of they," and that too generally involves the use of a pronomial antecedent like "everybody," as in this example from Jane Austen (a great lover of the singular they/their): "I would have every body marry if they can do it properly." In other words, there is some historical precedent and a certain logical rationale for this usage. Although I personally am still uncomfortable with it, I have posted justifications for it, from various sources, on this very thread. One of those justifications is that although "everybody" and similar pronouns may technically be singular, they really have a plural meaning. In fact, some sources have insisted that there are times when using the singular is very misleading, as in the following example: "When John finished signing the national anthem, everybody sat down in his seat." Poor John, squashed to death! "Their seats" is clearly preferable. But -- "a reporter" is a noun, not a pronoun. And it is clearly, unmistakably singular, in meaning as well as in grammatical form. The only possible justification for turning the reporter into a "they" is to keep the sentence "gender-neutral," and that, in my opinion, is not sufficient justification. Even the greatest booster of the use of the "singular they/their," Henry Churchyard, of the "Everybody Loves Their Jane Austen" page, rules that indeterminate gender of an antecedent singular noun is "neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition" for the use of the singular "their" (or "they"): There are actually clearly-defined patterns in the use of singular "their" etc. Such plural pronouns can only be used with a morphologically and syntactically singular antecedent when what it refers to is semantically collective and/or generic and/or indefinite and/or unknown. (A lack of knowledge about the gender of what is referred to, or an "epicene" reference to both genders or indefinitely to either, will in many cases help to make the use of singular "their" sound acceptable, by contributing to such semantic indeterminacy; however, note that unspecified gender is actually neither a necessary or sufficient condition for use of singular "their." crossmyt.com In any event, Churchyard's site has many, many examples of the singular they/their drawn from the OED and from the pages of Jane Austen. If you can find a construction there similar to the one you used, I should like to see it. BTW, to return to the imply/infer problem, would you really say that Webster's Third International "broke the dam"? The following totally incomprehensible definition of "imply," which comes from Webster's 1945 New International, 2nd Edition, seems to have at least helped spring a leak: "..to involve in substance or essence, or by fair inference, or by construction of law, when not expressly stated in words or by signs." (?!) Joan