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From: chabot@amber.DEC (l s chabot)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang
Subject: Re: 'they' as third person singular indefinate sex pronoun
Message-ID: <207@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 13:44:07 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.207
Posted: Mon Jan 14 13:44:07 1985
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Xref: watmath net.women:4117 net.nlang:2421

Jeff Sonntag  ==  >
>    I've been following the discussion here about the use of 'they' instead of
> 'he' as a third person singular indefinate sex pronoun, and as I was writing
> an article recently, I needed just such a pronoun.  I thought: "What the heck,
> let's try out this 'they' word."; and did.  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?"
>    Now it may be that I've used this word inappropriately somehow, (though it
> seems to be right to me) but if not, then I guess I'll have to agree with the
> people who said that it looks and sounds very clumsy. 

It *does* often sound clumsy to have number conflict between the subject and
the verb ("...if they finds out").  It is suggested that you rephrase your
sentence to be

   " is anonymous;  if they find out where I live, will they
   come bomb my house?" 

Now evaluate it for clumsiness.

And in answer to the question, I think they'll do that only if their userid is
"anarchist" rather than "anonymous". :-) 

L S Chabot
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