pase@ogccse.ogc.edu (Douglas M. Pase) (06/24/89)
In article <18083@paris.ics.uci.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.EDU writes:
-I don't think it's a very good idea to refer to `they' ever as a
-singular pronoun, since when it is subject, its verb would never display
-singular agreement.
It isn't necessary, a generic third person singular pronoun already
exists. It is `one', as in "one knows not to cross the street before
the light turns green."
[This article must have bounced off of some node -- I've got three
copies so far! It also took a long time to get here, hence the delay
in posting. --Cindy]
--
Douglas M. Pase Department of Computer Science
tektronix!ogccse!pase Oregon Graduate Center
pase@cse.ogc.edu (CSNet) 19600 NW Von Neumann Dr.
(503) 690-1121 x7303 Beaverton, OR 97006-1999bevans@tesla.unm.edu (Mathemagician) (06/26/89)
In article <3268@ogccse.ogc.edu> pase@ogccse.UUCP (Douglas M. Pase) writes: >In article <18083@paris.ics.uci.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.EDU writes: >-I don't think it's a very good idea to refer to `they' ever as a >-singular pronoun, since when it is subject, its verb would never display >-singular agreement. >It isn't necessary, a generic third person singular pronoun already >exists. It is `one', as in "one knows not to cross the street before >the light turns green." At the present moment, "one" can sound contrived or haughty (your example seems, to me, to sound a bit snobbish..."One never sees cake in the best houses these days....bread and butter." [Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Ernest]) And what happens to "him" and "her"? ("The apprentice will give the item to the master. After giving it to 'one' (?), 'one' will perform...") At the present moment, "they" is the "best" alternative I can think of. -- Brian Evans |"Momma told me to never kiss a girl on the first bevans at tesla.unm.edu | date...But that's OK...I don't kiss girls."
bloch%mandrill@ucsd.edu (Steve Bloch) (06/28/89)
bevans@tesla.unm.edu (Mathemagician) writes: >At the present moment, "one" can sound contrived or haughty... > >At the present moment, "they" is the "best" alternative I can think of. The "right" solution of course is to change the present moment, and make "one" or some such neuter pronoun acceptable. After all, in everyday conversation a person's gender is seldom highly relevant to the discussion. But there's a lot of inertia against that one, as you point out. On the other hand, "they" with a singular verb, or a singular antecedent, REALLY bugs me (as does "data" used in the singular, so maybe I'm weird). Douglas Hofstadter, in _Metamagical_Themas_, discusses the issue and concludes that in a surprisingly large number of cases the pronoun can be omitted entirely by restructuring the sentence. And in many other cases a gender-specific pronoun is unobjectionable because the identity and gender of its antecedent are known (William Strunk complains about "A friend of mine once told me that they...") In the remaining cases, I either use "one" or alternate "him"s and "her"s randomly. Another grammatical question: why is "women" used so much as an adjec- tive, sometimes even for singular objects? ("women writers", etc.) It sounds almost as ludicrous as its male counterpart, especially when we have perfectly good adjectives "male" and "female". "The above opinions are my own. But that's just my opinion." Stephen Bloch