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Pronouns (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I already mentioned that we can get grammatical "they" with non-definite/unknown referents (your first and third examples), and in the second example Shakespeare is clearly referring to all mothers with "them", so none of these are counterexamples to my generalization above. I think you'll be hard pressed to find many examples with a specific, definite antecedent (though it is possible, of course - grammaticality is a spectrum, after all).

This distinction, as well as the fact that modern speakers are showing various innovative uses of "they", has been well known for decades in the linguistic literature.

It kinda grinds my gears when people intentionally (or maybe just ignorantly in this case) misconstrue linguistic data to support their political positions, and that includes all of the boneheads acting like singular "they" isn't a thing at all for their own nefarious purposes as well.

It doesn't matter that English hasn't had specific singular "they" until Gen Z. That's just a fact of history and language, and has (or at least should have) nothing to do with the rights of non-binary people.

Stop using bullshit linguistic data to try to justify your political positions! All of you! This is how we get Hindu nationalists justifying their oppression of Muslims with ridiculous claims that Sanskrit is the original human language. Language is just language!

Edit: I just went and read your other thread, and it does appear that you're just being disingenuous at this point, or at least doubling down after being proved incorrect. Your own source pointed out that Shakespeare would not have used "they" with specific individuals. Thymos is completely (and demonstrably) correct.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I already mentioned that we can get grammatical "they" with non-definite/unknown referents (your first and third examples)

The gender is known though. What a weird distinction to make that it's talking about an abstract gendered person rather than concrete. I don't know why the grammar would make that distinction (nor do I think it does).

in the second example Shakespeare is clearly referring to all mothers with "them"

Sure, but it's in the singular. It's "a mother" as the subject, not mothers.

none of these are counterexamples to my generalization above. I think you'll be hard pressed to find many examples with a specific, definite antecedent (though it is possible, of course - grammaticality is a spectrum, after all).

The argument that is almost always made is that "they can't be singular." That argument is clearly bogus. Sure, maybe it historically hasn't been used for a particular subject, but that's a fairly minor grammatical shift. If we're going to argue that's wrong because it isn't historically accepted then we probably need to speak a totally different version of English than we do because it has made much larger shifts than that in the past.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

What a weird distinction to make that it’s talking about an abstract gendered person rather than concrete. I don’t know why the grammar would make that distinction (nor do I think it does).

Then you're gonna be absolutely gobsmacked by the other grammatical distinctions that exist across the world's languages.

It doesn't matter if you know why the grammar would make that distinction or not - the distinction exists, and is widely accepted in the linguistic literature (as cited above) whether you think it does or not.

The argument that is almost always made is that “they can’t be singular.”

I'm not sure what that has to do with our conversation, since I've never made that claim (and neither did Thymos). If that's what you're basing your argument on here, then that's a pretty egregious strawman of my position.

Sure, maybe it historically hasn’t been used for a particular subject, but that’s a fairly minor grammatical shift.

And yet it exists nonetheless, rendering your "correction" of my original comment (and your "correction" of Thymos's comments in the other thread, for that matter) inaccurate and misleading.

If we’re going to argue that’s wrong because it isn’t historically accepted then we probably need to speak a totally different version of English than we do because it has made much larger shifts than that in the past.

I haven't argued that anything is "wrong" other than your description of the historical use of English pronouns. Linguistics is descriptive, not normative, which means that the historical facts of English have no bearing whatsoever on what we "probably need" to do.