4
votes
Can the epicene personal pronoun “they’ be used regardless of semantic gender of the word?
I think that if somebody wants to be called they, you should call him or her they. Similarly, if they want to be called he (or she) you should call them he (or she). It's common courtesy, like calling ...
- 90.3k
4
votes
Can the epicene personal pronoun “they’ be used regardless of semantic gender of the word?
I'm not sure what you mean by "grammatical": the meaning of this word varies between lay people, experts, and other experts. (That is, even experts argue about the precise meaning of calling ...
- 84.5k
2
votes
pronoun agreement in neither nor
"3. Neither my friend nor I feel our best in the morning." is correct.
Neither my friend nor I feel my best in the morning.
and
Neither my friend nor I feel her best in the morning.
are both wrong.
- 21
2
votes
Accepted
Why "they", and not "it", is used here?
I agree with you. Singular "...is a lie..." sounds better to me in English. (Incidentally, it also seems to be closer to the wording originally used by Bakunin: the Russian text of Statism and Anarchy ...
- 84.5k
2
votes
Why "am" is used in the sentence "It is useless to me who ___ ill"?
It is useless to me who is ill.
In relative clauses "who" is normally construed according as its antecedent, for example It is I who am ill, where the relative pronoun is construed as 1st ...
- 13.5k
1
vote
Can he be an object pronoun?
He is a subject pronoun in Who is he? The question has subject-auxiliary inversion; it it asking the listener to fill in the blank in the corresponding uninverted statement He is [noun phrase]. E.g. "...
- 84.5k
1
vote
pronoun agreement in neither nor
In essence, you're asking for how possessive pronouns preceding an object of a verb pair with the subjects in a neither...nor construction, especially when that object could pertain to either subject. ...
- 41.7k
1
vote
Singular words that imply groups
Whether it's okay to switch from "party" to "company" depends on what you mean by these two words. It sounds as if you're using "party" as a group of people gathering together socially, and then ...
- 16.3k
1
vote
Is a band referred to by "Who" or "What"?
A band is a group of people making music. A group is a thing or entity, not a person.
Ergo, "Which band is your favorite?"
And no who's, that's what Horton hears. [joke]
- 15.3k
1
vote
...if one of us dropped "our phone" or "his phone"?
The subject "each of us" is singular, so if you use singular his the first time, you need to keep on using it:
It would be ruinous if one of us dropped his phone in the river, so each of us put his ...
- 90.3k
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