Damian.Cugley@prg.oxford.ac.UK (Damian Cugley) (01/18/91)
(This is probably a tired subject but never mind.)
Several people have over the last umpteen years proposed new pronouns
to fill the lack of non-gender-specific third-person pronouns in
English. (Also one of my biggest disappointments about Esperanto.)
I'd be interested (more with an eye to using them in fiction than
everyday writing) to know
(a) who coined them, and
(b) if any of them have achieved any real currency.
I've seen the following:
Nominative (he, she): E they
Objective (him, her): hir/hyr them
Possesive (his, her): hir/hyr Eir their
Whatever (his, hers): theirs
Reflexive (himself, hirself/ themself
herself): hyrself
[my grasp of gramatical terms is rather dodgy]
Hir etc. I've seen in more than one place so it might be the more
popular? E etc. is from the AmSTeX manual.
Is hir spelled with a y or an i? Can anyone fill in the blanks above?
Any other fun sets.
Thanks in advance (that is, "advTHANKSance")
//- Damian Cugley ---------------------------------------------------\
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\-------------------------------------------------------------------//bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad) (01/29/91)
In my native language there are three different "kinds" or patterns of nouns, 'masculinum', 'femininum' and 'neutrum'. The word for 'human' is neutrum, which means that a direct translation would give: human -- it -- its -- itself etc. Would this work in English, or is 'it' too associated with 'things'? Thomas Gramstad
tdaniels@athena.mit.edu (Troy E Daniels) (02/27/91)
In article <CMM.0.88.664912889.bfu@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no>, bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad) writes: > In my native language there are three different "kinds" or patterns > of nouns, 'masculinum', 'femininum' and 'neutrum'. The word for > 'human' is neutrum, which means that a direct translation would > give: human -- it -- its -- itself etc. Would this work in English, > or is 'it' too associated with 'things'? In English, "it" refers to something of neither sex. Males are he, females are she, and everything else is it. An animal may be referred to as "it," especially if its sex is unknown. (See previous sentence for an example.) Trying to call humans "it" would only be done if you were trying to be very insulting. It carries a very strong implication that the pronoun refers to something non-human. (Evolutionists and English teachers aren't in complete agreement, apparently.) Troy Daniels tdaniels@athena.mit.edu
Damian.Cugley@prg.oxford.ac.UK (Damian Cugley) (03/14/91)
From: Troy E Daniels <tdaniels@athena.mit.edu> Message-Id: <1991Jan29.213937.7568@athena.mit.edu> > In article <CMM.0.88.664912889.bfu@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no>, bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad) writes: > > Would this work in English, > > or is 'it' too associated with 'things'? > [...] It carries a very strong > implication that the pronoun refers to something non-human. > (Evolutionists and English teachers aren't in complete agreement, > apparently.) I always thought the distinction was as Thomas said -- in English, "it" refers to non-people (e.g., tables and animals) and "he" or "she" refer to people (humans, and animals owned by sentimental people). I never did get around to positing a summary, did I? Well, here's what I have so far: ??, hyr, hyr, hyrself pron. "heer" or "her"? (spotted in at least one comic!) e, ?, eir, eirself the AmSTeX manual, Joy of TeX tey, tem, teir, teirself person, per, pers, perself - Marge Piercy, in WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME (used in a Utopia as a *replacement* for he/she -- all persons are referred to as "person"). Marge Piercy's Utopia makes interesting reading. The only one mentioned by more than one person. co, co's, coself mun, mun's, munself [The apostrophes ought to be dropped from these for consitency with hers, its and theirs.] You can have endless pointless arguments about whether "they" can be used as a gender-unknown singular pronoun (as a programmer I'd be tempted to say if it can hold two people of unknown gender, it can surely hold one :^>). By "pointless arguments", I means ones about whether established usage of "they" was originally Correct(tm) English and was squashed by Victorians in favour of "he" as gender-neutral. Using the habits of long-dead nutters as your main criterion of how a language should be organized is a little silly, IMO. [Too bad the Vics didn't decide to have "the plural subsume the singular" while they were at it; the number of repetitions of "...that foo or those foos..." in Acts of Parliment is horrible.] Not that there is any likelyhood of any of the above being added to the language; the informal spoken usage of they is pretty much accepted -- with written English we will simply have to continue squirming when it comes to talking about individuals. (So why am I interested? For use in fiction mainly.) Belated thankx to the people who replied to my original message Damian