I have read several articles on "singular they" and found that most authors don't distinguish
a non-specific indefinite person from a specific definite person on the issue.
Examples of the former are: everybody, anybody, somebody, nobody, each person, etc.
Examples of the latter are: the murderer...
Curiosity about such things is admirable, but I doubt that such a rule operates. How did you determine that such use is "almost non-existent in the literature"? As stated in the popular answer here, the use of they to designate a single person is acceptable to some, somewhat acceptable to others, and not acceptable to still others. When discussing a known person, it's more likely we know the person's gender. So we'd want a singular they less often in such cases.
@JimReynolds "How did you determine that such use is "almost non-existent in the literature""? Here are examples of singular they all of which refer to a non-specific indefinite person. Older usage by respected authors en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they List of examples of singular "their" etc. from Jane Austen's writings crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html If you know the counterexamples, please let me know.
@JimReynolds (Continued) "When discussing a known person, it's more likely we know the person's gender. So we'd want a singular they less often in such cases." I can think of many cases in which the specific definite person's gender is unknown by the speaker/author: the murderer in a certain murder case, the author of an anonymous letter or a novel, the foreign author of a novel or an academic paper, etc.
I can think of many cases where cars don't have wheels, but I still think most of them do. I gave a logical reason we can expect to find relatively more of one type than the other. Also, not seeing something is weak evidence that it does not exist.
@JimReynolds Most advocates of singular they point out that many venerable authors like Shakespeare, Thackeray used such a pronoun to support their claim. However, all of their examples are those of singular they referring to a non-specific indefinite person. Hence, it does not follow that the use of singular they referring to a specific definite person is grammatical.
@JimReynolds Could you show us the examples before the 1960s when the women's liberation movement started?
Sure. Me too. We can reply anytime, even if it's days later. The questions pages are not supposed to be for discussions, so I moved it here. I used the Corpus of Contemporary L
I used the Corpus of Contemporary American English for my search. corpus.byu.edu/coca It only goes back to 1990.
Well, you know you can talk to him directly, right?
I'm not a linguist.
I think you should ask a new question about this. It seems to me a separate and more detailed question, and there will be more than one opinion. You might get something more useful to you than my response.
But I would be willing to help you write the question carefully, if you want. It's not easy to write such questions alone.
"*I think you should ask a new question about this.*" Let's continue to discuss on the issue for a little while before doing so. I found the following article by Geoffrey K. Pullum. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=89 He shows that "everyone" is semantically **plural** using the following grammatically correct sentence. *Everyone knows each other.* Hence, the sentence *Everyone did their best* is grammatical. On the other hand, the sentence *Leslie knows each other* is ungrammatical. So is the sentence *Leslie did their best*.
Yes, but there is no one grammar. There are grammars. You can hold that it's ungrammatical to use they as a pronoun for a specific or definite person. And you can support it any number of ways. But one definition of grammar is that it describes how people use a language. Some pr
Gah! I am not having much luck writing here on my smartphone.
My theory of grammar will allow quite a bit of mess and contradiction of "standards" and traditions for the sake of facilitating reduction of gender bias.
I support you in pursuing your interest, but I am not interested enough to read more articles on the topic, etc.
Discussion between Jim Reynolds and i…
Discussion between Jim Reynolds and i…