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From: andyr@ihuxa.UUCP (Ronald R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: "Their" as a substitute for his/her
Message-ID: <714@ihuxa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Jan-85 13:42:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxa.714
Posted: Wed Jan  9 13:42:04 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jan-85 08:02:58 EST
References: <1315@dciem.UUCP> <643@bunker.UUCP> <1914@sun.uucp> <401@hou2e.UUCP> <1108@teddy.UUCP> <19800@arizona.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 24

In response to:

> gary@arizona.UUCP (Gary Marc Levin)
> As for agreement of number, ``you'' takes a plural verb even when it
> is used in its singular sense.  [Ex: You are beating a dead horse.]

This seems to be an anomaly of the language.  Some languages (French
and Russian that I know of) have different verb forms for the singular 
and plural second person. (Their second person pronouns also 
differentiate singular and plural.)  Norwegian, however, uses the
same form of the verb regardless of person or number.

Back to the main topic:
  I personally find it difficult to read "s/he" (perhaps my social
conditioning?).  I do prefer consistency both in speech and writing
when referring to an individual human being (i.e. consistently
"he" or "she" or "one" or "they").  Note that I said PREFER.  I
can easily adapt.  Discussion on this topic seems to get heated at
times; please direct any flames to /dev/null.
-- 
-- Ronald R. Anderson
   AT&T Bell Laboratories
   Naperville, Illinois
   [...ihnp4!]ihuxa!andyr