Timeline for Can the epicene personal pronoun “they’ be used regardless of semantic gender of the word?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 16:26 | comment | added | Robusto | Your sentence using “footprints” reveals the unintended consequences of singular they: potential ambiguity. Initial syntax parsing will want to make a plural pronoun agree with a plural antecedent — in this case, footprints — resulting at least in a forced reparsing. | |
| Jan 15, 2019 at 9:09 | comment | added | herisson | @Zebrafish: For me, the relevant difference is that "The lioness" is definite and specific, while "a woman" is indefinite and (in my interpretation of the sentence) nonspecific. | |
| Jan 15, 2019 at 9:07 | comment | added | Zebrafish | You've said many people use (they/their/them) even when the referent's gender is known: "telling a woman what they can and can't do". You don't seem to call this wrong. Yet you say when you specify a lioness it doesn't work to use the pronouns "they" and "their". I don't see the difference between the two, because the argument we're having is whether (they/their/them) can be used as pronouns for antecedents with known gender. If we can do this, assuming the woman example works, what's the reason that the lioness example doesn't work with (they/their)? | |
| Jan 15, 2019 at 7:01 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 6:50 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 6:42 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 6:35 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 6:26 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 6:18 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 6:08 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 3:17 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 3:17 | comment | added | Double U | It is unusual, but I am asking for grammatical soundness. | |
| Jan 15, 2019 at 3:16 | comment | added | herisson | @DoubleU: That’s not a usual usage of “they”, and it would likely confuse your listeners. | |
| Jan 15, 2019 at 3:16 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2019 at 3:15 | comment | added | Double U | No, I said explicitly that the person recognized themselves as "father" and a "man", but the speaker still uses the they pronoun. | |
| Jan 15, 2019 at 3:12 | history | answered | herisson | CC BY-SA 4.0 |