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From: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: re: German generic pronouns
Message-ID: <5953@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Mar-84 04:24:15 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.5953
Posted: Thu Mar  1 04:24:15 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 07:42:20 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab, Los Altos, CA
Lines: 25

From: akov68::boyajian

	Prentiss Riddle points out that my statement regarding a generic "she"
in German is not true. Well, not *exactly*. What I should have made clear, and
apparently didn't is that *sie* is not a third person *singular* generic pronoun
but is *the* third person plural pronoun (which, since it does not have gender,
is generic). So *sie* means either "she" or "they". I think that despite this
minor correction, my argument stills hold water. Making a analogy in English,
the situation of *sie* as "she/they" would be as if "he" were used as the third
person plural instead of "they". I'm sure that if this were true, there would be
just as much of a row put up by the anti-sexist language people as there cur-
rently is about the singular generic "he".
	Second of all, while it's true that *Sie* (formal "you") and *sie*
("she/they") are two different words (capitalization in German makes for differ-
ent words), I've been saying the same thing about "he" (masculine) and "he"
(generic).
	At any rate, I thank Prentiss for pointing out the flaw in my statement
and thereby offering me the chance to clarify it.


				  --- jayembee
				      (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard)
				UUCP: (decvax!decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian)
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