singular they

Posted Mar 31, 2012 17:57 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: singular they by giraffedata
Parent article: Fedora release naming "is a" bit contentious

For whatever reason a person seeks to follow rules of grammar, a rule such as "'they' is plural" that has been in place since it was manufactured by 17th century grammarians counts.

The problem with that »rule« is that it is largely based on wishful thinking on the part of grammar prescriptivists, 17th century or otherwise.

If you disagree, check out Language Log, where some of the most important real-life, 21st century, English grammarians hang out. If Geoffrey K. Pullum, who is a linguistics professor at the University of Edinburgh and a co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language – widely considered definitive – says that singular »they« is OK, I tend to take his word over that of mere amateurs in the comment sections of Linux web sites.

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singular they

Posted Apr 1, 2012 5:19 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

there is no single right answer to this question any more than there is a right answer to top-posting vs bottom-posting in e-mail

the 'right' answer depends on your audience. It doesn't matter what the 'official' answer is if the people that you are talking with disagree.

singular they

Posted Apr 1, 2012 5:20 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

To clarify, the point of writing and talking is to communicate, If the form of your message gets in the way, you are wrong, now matter what the official position on what you did is.

singular they

Posted Apr 1, 2012 11:59 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

The problem at hand isn't so much that some people misunderstand singular »they« (which would indeed be a communication problem).

It is rather that some people erroneously believe English grammar has a »rule« that says »they« must always be plural – a rule which leading experts on the subject agree does not exist, and which has never really existed in actual practice, as demonstrated by several centuries' worth of writings from many authors including ones like Shakespeare or Austen who are otherwise considered among the greatest in the history of English-language literature –, and that they try to force this »rule« onto other people because the use of singular »they« offends their sense of aesthetics (which is an arrogance problem).

singular they

Posted Apr 1, 2012 17:41 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

some people erroneously believe English grammar has a »rule« that says »they« must always be plural

It isn't erroneous. There is no RFC for English grammar, so you can't say so definitively whether any rule exists or does not exist. Rules of English grammar exist vaguely in the collective minds of English speakers/listeners. There is quite clearly a rule that "they" is plural, just as there is one that it is singular.

The Pullum article you cite doesn't use the word "rule." It says singular they is "grammatical." Let's not assume we know exactly what he means by that. There are at least two very different kinds of grammar, prescriptive and descriptive, and it isn't even controversial that singular they conforms to descriptive grammar of English. I.e. people say it. Pullum notes that Strunk and White, a prescriptive grammar which is about the closest we can come to an RFC, incontrovertibly pronounces "they" plural.

The Pullum article also does not directly address "they" with a definite singular antecedent ("the user turned off their computer") (in fact it explicitly disclaimed that), commenting on the indefinite case ("everyone turned off their computers"), which is rather different because an indefinite pronoun can more easily be associated in the mind with multiple people.

As for whether a plural "they" prescription exists, I'm influenced heavily by the fact that I've been studying English grammar in earnest for about 40 years and until 2 years ago had never heard anyone claim that singular they is grammatical. Until then, lots of people argued for plural they, but it was always with, "we have to change the grammar because the existing one holds women back and/or disrespects them." And of course, lots of people have used it throughout history, but the same is true of plenty of things widely accepted as errors, so that doesn't influence me much.

singular they

Posted Apr 1, 2012 22:46 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Pullum notes that Strunk and White, a prescriptive grammar which is about the closest we can come to an RFC, incontrovertibly pronounces "they" plural.

Strunk and White try to be prescriptivist, but they prescribe lots of things that – irrespective of the actual merit of the stuff they prescribe – they then don't actually adhere to themselves, in the selfsame book. This makes one wonder exactly how far prescriptivist grammar gets one. They should at the very least eat their own dog food.

If the actual RFCs were anything like Strunk and White we would still communicate by semaphore flag. The best one can do with a copy of Strunk and White is burn it for heat in winter.

singular they

Posted Apr 4, 2012 13:54 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

The wonderful and horrible thing about English is that there isn't any real authority on the subject except for general use and consensus. If you like you can think of my insistence on treating 'they' as plural as a campaign to direct that general consensus towards a use that I prefer.

singular they

Posted Apr 5, 2012 9:10 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. I could have quoted CGEL but I thought that that would be too much like using a thermonuclear weapon to swat flies.