Standard English pronouns , now [and] "then"

Subject: Standard English pronouns , now [and] "then"
From: "Janet M. Swisher" <swisher -at- enthought -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 11:47:55 -0500


"Bonnie Granat" wrote:
>
> > From: Kathleen [mailto:keamac -at- cox -dot- net]
> >
> > But I thought I saw a note
> > recently that
> > "they" can be used in the singular and plural--was that
> historically
> > speaking or a recent development?
> >
> > OTOH: I don't agree with using "they" as singular; the sentences
> don't
> > make sense.
> >
>
> I believe there's historical precedent for it back in the 14th and
> 15th centuries, but if it was standard usage then (and I don't know
> that to be the case), that certainly seemed to have changed by the
> time you and I turned up.

There was no such thing as "standard" English usage in the 14th and 15th centuries. The upper classes, clerics, and scholars in England were just getting over using French and Latin. They were starting to use English more commonly, but it was primarily spoken by the lower and uneducated classes, so nobody had gotten around to trying to standardize it at that point.

And while "standards" regarding singular indefinite "they" may have changed in the last 6 centuries, the usage is still quite common in spoken English, which is why it's still an issue. One could make a case that the loss of either the singular second person (thou, thee, thy) or the second person subjective case (thou, ye) constitutes a loss of precision equal to or greater than that posed by singular indefinite "they", which is far more restricted in scope. However, those forms have completely disappeared from common use, so nobody makes a fuss over them anymore. The Quakers made a political/religious point of using "thee", starting in the 1630s, and the usage persisted as an in-group marker for about 3 centuries. But the unselfconscious use of "thee" among Quakers appears to have died out with my grandparents' generation. (In recent times, it's "thee", never "thou", because of the general trend of dropping the subjective case.)

> I just know we're going to be talking a bit more about this now. ; )

But of course :-) Indefinite pronouns in English were part of the focus of my bachelor's thesis, many years ago.

I generally try to avoid singular "they" in formal technical documentation, because it's not accepted as standard. But personally, I'm in favor of it. I recently edited a role-playing game manual that had singular indefinite "they" all over it. It sounded natural and conversational, and rewriting it to plural, to my ear, would have sounded stilted.

--
Janet Swisher --- Senior Technical Writer
Enthought, Inc. http://www.enthought.com



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