Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct (2009)

https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/

by shawndumas • 7 years ago

45 84 7 years ago

motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com

baggy_trough• 7 years ago

In my dialect of English, singular they works well for unspecified third persons, but very badly for specific ones.

Pfhreak7• 7 years ago

What dialect of English is that?

forbin_meet_hal• 7 years ago

"Harper presented to the leadership committee and they were confused."

Is 'they' referring to Harper or the leadership committee?

CiPHPerCoder4• 7 years ago

Clearly "they" refers to the recipient of this sentence. /s

Unlike e.g. German, English doesn't have a gender neutral singular pronoun to use. The only one that fits naturally in most peoples' conversation (and doesn't sound like something uttered by a science fiction-inspired cult) is "singular they".

b3orn• 7 years ago

The gender neutral singular pronoun in German "es" is the same as the english "it". And it would be weird to apply it to a person in both languages.

ernst_klim5• 7 years ago

Unlike e.g. German, English doesn't have a gender neutral singular pronoun to use.

What German pronoun are you talking about?

wbronitsky• 7 years ago

Exactly what point are you making here?

sparky_z• 7 years ago

It's true that there is an ambiguity in this particular sentence you've constructed. But that's always going to be possibile when pronouns are involved. Just pick two subjects that share a pronoun, put them in the same sentence, and then use the pronoun. Uh oh!

What if "Harper" were the name of a company? Rejecting singular "they" wouldn't save you then. I would propose that whatever remedy you would suggest for the "Harper Inc." case, you go ahead and apply to this one as well.

ibejoeb• 7 years ago

I think the point is that the author of the piece has also constructed sentences wherein the ambiguity can be argued away. That doesn't make it more useful, though.

Replacing "he" and "she" with "they" both removes information and introduces an ambiguity in number.

downvoter: am I wrong?

paxys• 7 years ago

"Harper presented to Jake and he was confused."

Which one is 'he' referring to? Exact same ambiguity.

bargl• 7 years ago

"Harper presented to Jessica and she was confused." vs "Harper presented to Jessica and they were confused."

"Harper presented to James and he was confused." vs "Harper presented to James and they were confused."

"Harper presented to Sam and he was confused." vs "Harper presented to Sam and they were confused."

"Harper presented to Sam and she was confused." vs "Harper presented to Sam and they were confused."

"Harper presented to the board and they were confused." vs "Harper presented to the board and they were confused."

I'm all for calling people what they want but to assume that it doesn't add context in a lot of situations isn't accurate either.

Better practice (imo) would be to use peoples names more.

"Harper presented to Jessica and Jessica was confused."

"Harper presented to James and James was confused."

"Harper presented to Sam and Sam was confused."

"Harper presented to Sam and Harper was confused."

"Harper presented to the board and the board was confused."

bdowling• 7 years ago

The point is that where the antecedents differ in number, the semantic number of the pronoun may resolve an ambiguity.

If "they" can mean either singular or plural, then it doesn't help to resolve the ambiguity at all.

deburo• 7 years ago

The first 3 paragraphs could've been skipped.

It really starts at: "I’ve wanted for some time to have one place to send everyone who complains about singular they".

Skunkleton• 7 years ago

“She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.”

I fall into category C: Native English speaker who has no idea how to use English properly. Could someone please explain what is supposedly wrong with this sentence?

grardb3• 7 years ago

I suppose for people opposed to the singular "they," the "correct" way to write this would be something like:

“She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in one's clothes.”

or:

“She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in his or her clothes.”

furgooswft132• 7 years ago

I don't get it. "their" in this sentence clearly refers to "everybody", which is plural.

lotophage• 7 years ago

I found that sentence mildly painful to parse because the relative clause that attaches to "everybody" is split by verb phrase "ought to do" (bit of a garden-path sentence). It would be much easier to read if it was "as everybody who falls into deep water in their clothes ought to do".

franey• 7 years ago

'Everybody' is singular, and 'their' is (generally) plural. One way to resolve that conflict would be to rewrite the second clause to say "...as one ought to do when one falls into deep water in one's clothes". Using 'one' isn't very common in North America in my experience.

progval6• 7 years ago

"their" is used kind of like an indefinite pronoun. I guess you could use "one's" instead.

The article arguments against people who would say that "their" is incorrect, and "his" should be used instead

ravenstine• 7 years ago

I've gotten used to saying "they" when referring to people I don't know. When it comes to people I do know, I prefer "he" and "her" because it still provides context when referring to multiple people while saving on syllables. But I think it's a good thing not to immediately assume gender when referring to someone(one doesn't know) in an occupational role so we get out of the habit of thinking of nurses as "she", for instance.

I really appreciate someone pointing out that "they" is perfectly adequate. Ze and zir are still gendered, and extraterrestrial genders at that.

scrollaway3• 7 years ago

I really appreciate someone pointing out that "they" is perfectly adequate. Ze and zir are still gendered, and extraterrestrial genders at that.

I've always been really confused at these weird attempts at pseudo-gender-neutral pronouns when "they" exists. It's like… I'm not a native English speaker. I learned about "they"-as-singular in English year 2. How do native English speakers not know about it? How do you get to "zir" before you learn about something this basic?

i_am_proteus2• 7 years ago

Many native English speakers don't know about it because it was technically incorrect when they were taught English ("he" was both gender-neutral and male), and sort of still is, even though language evolves and the gender-neutral-singular "they" has certainly entered the common parlance.

umanwizard3• 7 years ago

The serious answer is that in normal colloquial English, they was typically only used as a singular pronoun when talking about an unknown person; for example:

A: Somebody called asking for you.

B: Oh, what did they want?

This has always sounded perfectly natural in colloquial English (at least in the US; I can't speak for other countries). Contrast with the following:

A: Joe called asking for you.

B: Oh, what did they want?

This construction is slowly becoming more widespread, but would have sounded absolutely bizarre and ungrammatical to most native speakers (regardless of literacy/education) before the movement for gender-identity inclusiveness became mainstream, because people didn't really conceive of the possibility of knowing a specific person but not being able refer to them as "he" or "she".

-----

In response to sibling comments: I think this explanation is a lot more convincing than any variant of "singular they is (or was) wrong". There are two very different kinds of singular they, which elicit very different grammaticality responses from native English speakers.

781• 7 years ago

They is overwhelmingly used for plural. See how the wikipedia article starts:

They is the third-person plural personal pronoun (subjective case) in Modern English.

And only after that:

Although still controversial,[citation needed] and not officially accepted in formal context,[citation needed] it is also used with singular meaning, sometimes to avoid specifying the gender of the person referred to: see gender neutrality in language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They

pasabagi• 7 years ago

I think part of it is they were trying to draw attention to how ubiquitous gender is, and how much impact it has in apparently neutral language. I've read a whole bunch of sci-fi with hirs and so on, and it definitely does something.

progval6• 7 years ago

afaik, "ze/zir" is not supposed to be gender neutral, but to have a gender denotation outside he/his and she/her.

Liquix• 7 years ago

Has anyone been disputing the continued use of 'they' in referring to a person of unknown gender?

I was under the impression that the recent controversy surrounding the word is linked to the LGBTQ movement.

CiPHPerCoder4• 7 years ago

I was under the impression that the recent controversy surrounding the word is linked to the LGBTQ movement.

Nobody I know in the LGBTQ community takes issue with "singular they". In fact, many of my close non-binary friends prefer they/them.

grardb3• 7 years ago

I think Liquix is referring to the inverse scenario, which is people outside the LGBTQ community refusing to use "they" to refer to someone who prefers they/them.

thebooktocome• 7 years ago

Not really. Prescriptivists have been fighting singular they since the Victorian era.

https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

DennisP3• 7 years ago

The part that throws me is verbs. "They want to go for a walk." If we're referring to just one person then it seems it should be "they wants to go for a walk." It sounds horribly wrong but do we really want plural verb forms to also be singular sometimes?

Historically, I guess that's how we've always done it. But now, for people who prefer non-gender-specific pronouns, does it make sense to use plural verb forms when describing their actions, and singular verb forms for everybody else? Won't that get confusing sometimes?

Maybe we should bite the bullet and start treating singular "they" as singular.

zzo38computer• 7 years ago

No; singular "they" and singular "you" are both grammatically plural. However, if you are using it as singular it is still "yourself" rather than "yourselves", so, it should also be "themself" rather than "themselves" if it is being used as singular.

DennisP3• 7 years ago

Makes sense. "Themself" doesn't sound bad to me, really.

perfmode• 7 years ago

Do you wants to go, too?

DennisP3• 7 years ago

Heh good point. Thanks for helping me adjust to modern society.

yjftsjthsd-h• 7 years ago

I mean. That sounds weird precisely because "you" used to be plural.

umanwizard3• 7 years ago

Others have already pointed out that you, which used to be exclusively plural, still takes plural verb forms and nobody gets confused.

I'll add that this phenomenon is not restricted to English. On, in French, is traditionally a singular indefinite-person pronoun, mostly equivalent to the pronoun "one" in English (which sounds a bit archaic/formal now, so maybe a better translation is "people in general"). It takes singular third person verb conjugations.

However, nowadays, on has almost completely replaced nous (meaning "we") as a subject pronoun in informal, colloquial speech. But its conjugation is still third-person singular.

"We saw each other" is thus translated in formal speech or writing as "Nous nous sommes vus", and in colloquial speech as "On s'est vu".

mcphage• 7 years ago

do we really want plural verb forms to also be singular sometimes?

Wait ‘til you learn about scissors and underwear, it’s really going to blow your mind.

ernst_klim5• 7 years ago

https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

Can somebody explain, what's wrong with `he' referring to a person of unknown sex? At least in German (er) and in Russian (он) masculine pronoun is still being used for that purpose.

crooked-v• 7 years ago

Two reasons: first, it contributes to general presumptions of male-ness as the societal default and female-ness being out of place, and second, using either gender as the default in English just plain sounds weirder and more jarring than "they" in a variety of sentence constructions.

For the second factor, the example sentence presented first in the original article:

She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.

...sounds pretty jarring when you make it 'he'...

She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in his clothes.

ajkjk3• 7 years ago

It just.. doesn't mean that in English. It doesn't sound right, like in the examples in this article.

ernst_klim5• 7 years ago

Doesn't mean what? Generic he doesn't exist in English?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_h...

Pfhreak7• 7 years ago

Stallman's article about singular they has always struck me as Stallman just reserving the right to be rude.

Pronouns are a lot like nicknames or shortened names. You can ask people to call you Richard instead of 'Richie', 'Rich', or 'Dick' and generally expect that people will try to respect that. If someone wrote and essay that said, "I object to using the nickname someone prefers, because I found an equally correct replacement of my choosing..." I think we'd all raise an eyebrow.

Sure, go ahead and reserve that right, but did you really need to?

afastow3• 7 years ago

It sounds weird. Using singular "they" instead sounds perfectly natural.

Yeah there's also the fact that it implies that male is the "default" which isn't ideal, but that's really secondary to the fact that using "he" for an unspecified person doesn't sound right and probably never has. If it had ever sounded right, people would have been using it naturally and grammar prescriptivists wouldn't have had to spend so much time complaining about singular "they".

ernst_klim5• 7 years ago

It sounds weird. Using singular "they" instead sounds perfectly natural.

Interesting, because for me it's the opposite, meybe because I'm used to German and Russian, but

The patient should be informed of his therapeutic options.

Sounds sound, and

The patient should be informed of their therapeutic options.

Sounds gravely wrong.

jMyles2• 7 years ago

Although this essay is interesting and amusing (and a great rebuttal to many of the sillier objections to singular they), it does not address the main objection I hear (and the one that I find compelling enough to ask that people not use "they" for me):

I present to you as a singular entity. I find it disempowering to be addressed with a pronoun that might be understood as plural, as if you might address some of the needs of the multitudes within me but not others.

I very much prefer to be addressed with a different pronoun if I'm being addressed alone versus when I'm being addressed in a group.

Is that so weird?

Now, on the other hand, I think that gendered pronouns are downright idiotic.

So the pronoun that I've come to prefer is simply "it." I call many wonderful living things (think of an elderly redwood tree) "it" all the time, and it doesn't seem to bother the three nor anyone else.

If it's good enough for it, it's good enough for me.

progval6• 7 years ago

"You" is grammatically plural as well, its singular form is/was "thou". But now everyone sees it as a valid pronoun to refer to a single person.

jMyles2• 7 years ago

I always use y'all for second person plural.

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

Where once the singular was thee and thou forms, you and they developed singular use in parallel with each other hundreds of years ago.

For some reason, presumably connected with its use as non-gendered pronoun, there's only fuss made about they.

Pfhreak7• 7 years ago

I use singular they, and used it through tech interviewing and onboarding recently. It was a real challenge trying to figure out whether I wanted to use singular they during the interview. Correcting an interviewer or recruiter when they get your pronouns wrong is scary (on top of the anxiety that is programming job interviews.)

Over the years in tech I've found all sorts of different responses to me sharing my pronouns -- mostly people being supportive and a bit forgetful. But also people saying some unnecessarily cruel things, or going out of their way to say, "I DON'T HAVE TO RESPECT THAT!".

I've had people tell me, "Yes, fine, I'll acquiesce. But you should know you are wrong and I'm lying to you every time I use singular they."

Ok, sure, but we're colleagues and I'm just letting you know that's what I'd prefer? You can also always just use my name. I'm not going to go to HR if you get it wrong, I'm not going to get mad. I might remind you, but the reminder will be gentle and not accusatory. Why so much aggro?

avmich• 7 years ago

I'm just letting you know that's what I'd prefer

Do I always need to accommodate your preferences? Some of them could be hard to, like a frequently used feature of the language over which people have vocal disagreement.

If I do, can I ask you about reciprocal favors in language expressions of my choice? For some such preferences may look arbitrary, all underlying reasoning notwithstanding.

It's surely not a novel thing to have disagreements over language. How in general they are resolved historically?

Pfhreak7• 7 years ago

Do I always need to accommodate your preferences?

Of course not. I might think it's rude or disrespectful if you willfully disregard my preferences, but at no point did I ever insinuate you must take any action.

It's no different than requesting a certain nickname or shortened name over one's legal name.

ajkjk3• 7 years ago

How do you feel about "I'll try, but I'll probably screw it up because I'm really not used to this -- sorry in advance."

I kinda feel like I have to say something like that as a hedge. It helps prevent some of the anxiety about messing up.

Pfhreak7• 7 years ago

Totally reasonable to me? Look, at the end of the day we're all humans and many of us were raised with the idea that singular they was weird or wrong. I get it, you've been wired to default to he or she. I have absolutely zero concerns if that sometimes slips and you make a quick correction and move on.

What I take note of are the folks who either make no effort to try or folks who deliberately refuse to use singular they for me. Someone who is trying and getting it wrong sometimes is someone who is trying to support me, which I always appreciate.

Just don't be obsequious when you get it wrong -- I don't need a 3 minute speech about how you really support trans people and you have a trans member of your extended family and how important it is for you and others to get this right. I've had people spend literally 10 minutes on apologies after one slip up.

Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct (2009)

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