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From: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: 'they' as third person singular indefinate sex pronoun
Message-ID: <245@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jan-85 18:50:45 EST
Article-I.D.: mtxinu.245
Posted: Sat Jan 12 18:50:45 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jan-85 04:22:31 EST
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Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley, CA
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>                                                             The results
> were less than satisfying.  This is the phrase I ended up with:
>    " is anonymous;  if they finds out where I live, will
> they come bomb my house?"

In colloquial use, I would phrase this "incorrectly" as "... if they find
out ...", mixing singular and plural.  In many cases, the referant of the
pronoun *isn't* specifically singular, in which case even the "they" is
plural.  In written work, I typically avoid the singular/plural problem
by writing in plural whenever possible - which turns out to be most of the
time.

This leads me to another point of question, on which I'm not sure I like
the answer I seem to find.  If the referent of the pronoun is a known person
(i.e., their gender is known) what is the correct form?  Some would argue
that either "he" or "she" should be used as appropriate.  I'm not so sure,
since the whole point of the "their" discussion is to avoid discrimination
(or, really, to avoid the furtherance of a discriminatory system since in
the best of all possible worlds it might be reasonable to define one
pronoun [e.g., "she"] to mean both genders).  If I were to use "he" referring
to a man, who is otherwise unidentified - that is the context does not
specify that there is a particular individual - then there is confusion as
to whether the "he" is male or neuter.

What do you all think about this one?

(By the way, was the use of "their" above ["... their gender is known ..."]
uncomfortable to people who prefer "he"?  That context seems particularly
innoucous to me.  Maybe I'm just used to it [which is what I want].)

-- 
Ed Gould		    mt Xinu, 739 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146