bsc@wuphys.UUCP (Bryan Coughlan) (06/19/85)
< It's 11:00. Do you know where your pronouns are? > Mitch Marks: >Bryan Coughlan suggests that the solution to the "he or she" problem >is the creation of a new word, but acknowledges that it would be difficult >for such a coinage to catch on. > The difficulty is not in the incorporation of new words per se -- after >all, that much happens all the time. But pronouns in English are a closed >class (as they are in any language). We don't resist new nouns or verbs >or adjectives in the same way, because there are already so many, and because >the corresponding semantic field is open. Let's take a look at the "closed class" of personal pronouns: Singular Plural 1st person I We 2nd person You You (Y'all!) 3rd person He,She They The third person singular is the only form without a gender neutral pronoun. Why should this be so? Well, when the class was set up, women were considered by everyone to be second-class citizens. Thus, when in doubt, the default gender was male. Since then, things have changed to the point where women are actually considered to be first-class citizens (I hope!). I think that this is a big enough change in society to open up the pronoun class to include a new one. Mitch again: > In writing, 's/he' works pretty well, but I don't see how to transfer >it to speech. And in any case, if given a distinctive pronunciation it would >run up against the closed-class problem, the slowness with which the pronoun >system changes. Me (from original posting): >>My nomination ? Zhe. >>(The zh is pronounced like the z in azure) 'S/he' implies "she-he" (to me, anway!). Now, jam that into one syllable. How? Don't stress the first 'e' - "sh-he". Run that together some more and it comes out "zhe"! How's that for a pronunciation? ... And since it can be pronounced that way, it might as well be spelled that way! 1/2 :-) > My favorite choice would be to make hay out of a trend that's >already happening anyway. > Has someone left their book up here? > If anyone imagines that, they're crazy! > When someone speaks to you, look them in the face. > A big problem with this suggestion, I admit, is getting yourself to >use it in your academic and professional writing, where a certain brand of >standard English is expected. If you wrote 'sher' it would be obvious that >you've intentionally used a special form, with a special purpose; whether your >reader likes that or not, still they won't think you've just accidentally >slipped into substandard usage, as they might with 'they'. Well, I like 'zhe' better ... :-) > >If anyone thinks this is a wrong-headed approach, I hope THEY'll explain why. > > --Mitch Marks @ UChicago > ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar > And if anybody thinks I'm off-base, I hope ZHE'll explain why, too! -- Bryan S. Coughlan ( Yes, that's right. My first ihnp4!wuphys!bsc two initials are B.S. ! )
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (06/21/85)
In article <300@wuphys.UUCP> bsc@wuphys.UUCP (Bryan Coughlan) writes: > > Let's take a look at the "closed class" of personal >pronouns: > > Singular Plural > >1st person I We >2nd person You You (Y'all!) >3rd person He,She They > > The third person singular is the only form without >a gender neutral pronoun. Why should this be so? >Well, when the class was set up, women were considered >by everyone to be second-class citizens. Thus, when in >doubt, the default gender was male. Since then, things >have changed to the point where women are actually >considered to be first-class citizens (I hope!). I >think that this is a big enough change in society >to open up the pronoun class to include a new one. > Actually, this is incorrect. The system was set up so that the singular anaphoric pronoun agreed with its antecedent noun in *grammatical* gender, which originally was only loosely tied to biological gender. Thus, the "masculine" form was the default, when the antecedent gender was unknown, because masculine nouns were more common than other classes. Its "dominance" is an accident of grammatical history. (Note that German still uses these pronouns in the old, grammatical manner). -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) {trwrb|allegra|cbosgd|hplabs|ihnp4|aero!uscvax!akgua}!sdcrdcf!psivax!friesen or {ttdica|quad1|bellcore|scgvaxd}!psivax!friesen
barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (06/21/85)
Back in Shakespeare's day apparently, lower class British included a third person non-gendered pronoun "a" (pronounced ah). You'll find it in Mistress Quickly's narration of Falstaff's death, among other places. I have a friend who's writing a science fiction novel and using this for people of as yet undetermined sex. (The accusative form is the same as the nominate; the possessive is as.) It's a little confusing for th firsst few pages but quite easy to get used to. It would be even easier to get used to haring it, as it wouldn't sound nearly as much like another work--as it looks like the indefinite article in its written form. --Lee Gold
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (06/27/85)
In article <300@wuphys.UUCP> bsc@wuphys.UUCP (Bryan Coughlan) writes: > The third person singular is the only form without >a gender neutral pronoun. Why should this be so? >Well, when the class was set up, women were considered >by everyone to be second-class citizens. Thus, when in >doubt, the default gender was male. Since then, things >have changed to the point where women are actually >considered to be first-class citizens (I hope!). I >think that this is a big enough change in society >to open up the pronoun class to include a new one. In article <515@psivax.UUCP>, friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) replies: > Actually, this is incorrect. The system was set up so that >the singular anaphoric pronoun agreed with its antecedent noun in >*grammatical* gender, which originally was only loosely tied to >biological gender. Thus, the "masculine" form was the default, >when the antecedent gender was unknown, because masculine nouns >were more common than other classes. Its "dominance" is an accident >of grammatical history. (Note that German still uses these pronouns >in the old, grammatical manner). >-- > > Sarima (Stanley Friesen) Wait wait! Both sides: I have a lot of trouble with "The system was set up" (let alone adding "so that"), if you mean it at all like an ordinary passive, i.e., "[unspecified agent] set up the system (so that...)". It grew, it evolved, nobody set it up. Of course, assumptions and attitudes in the speech community have a major bearing on how a language changes. So I'll assume that's what you're arguing about (and not, say, a real conspiracy theory), and not get on the rag about terminological purity . <- {Speaking of patently offensive sexist language ... } SF does have a good point here, but I wonder if he's taking it too far. It doesn't amount to an argument for maintaining the status quo, e.g. on the ground that it originated from an innocent grammatical quirk. Regardless of origins, today English almost entirely lacks grammatical gender for nouns, which is to say that the gender for an anaphoric pronoun will be determined by natural gender. (There are a few moribund exceptions, such as 'she' for ships -- for some people.) But an indefinite, not yet referring to one individual (or referring to one individual whose sex is unknown), can't reasonably have any natural gender at all. If you use "he" there, you are imputing natural gender (masculine), even though there's no basis. It just is not an adequate default anymore. It's also possible to shore up BSC's position on the significance of the history. The language community during the time the (IE > Germanic > )English pronoun system was evolving cannot be considered entirely innocent of sexism just because there was a system of grammatical gender in large part independent of natural gender. (That last clause is meant as a summary of SF's argument.) Why do we call this grammatical feature "gender"? Why do we call two of the genders "masculine" and "feminine"? Because (in the European languages for which this terminology arose) at crucial places grammatical gender coincides with natural gender: words for male and female animals, especially humans. (Yes, there are exceptions, e.g. "fraulein".) And so it doesn't seem unreasonable to speculate that having masculine as the unmarked (= default, ordinary, not special or peculiar) grammatical gender may reflect that the speech community regarded male as the unmarked sex and female as marked. -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago (linguistics) ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (07/02/85)
In article <737@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) writes: > >Wait wait! Both sides: I have a lot of trouble with "The system was set up" >(let alone adding "so that"), if you mean it at all like an ordinary passive, >i.e., "[unspecified agent] set up the system (so that...)". It grew, it >evolved, nobody set it up. Of course, assumptions and attitudes in the >speech community have a major bearing on how a language changes. Actually, this is more or less what I was trying to say, even if I did not say it very clearly. I felt the original posting did sound like a "conspiracy" theory, and I was trying to point out that the pattern seen today is largely a result of undirected developemnent in the English language. > >SF does have a good point here, but I wonder if he's taking it too far. >It doesn't amount to an argument for maintaining the status quo, e.g. >on the ground that it originated from an innocent grammatical quirk. >Regardless of origins, today English almost entirely lacks grammatical >gender for nouns, which is to say that the gender for an anaphoric pronoun >will be determined by natural gender. > Actually, I was not trying to argue for maintain the status-quo, I was only trying to eliminate what I considered to be a bogus argument, based on a misconception about haw language developes. -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) {trwrb|allegra|cbosgd|hplabs|ihnp4|aero!uscvax!akgua}!sdcrdcf!psivax!friesen or {ttdica|quad1|bellcore|scgvaxd}!psivax!friesen