Re: "Gender-free masculine pronoun"? Absurd.

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 02/22/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 03:02:51 GMT

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:4219E977.720A@worldnet.att.net...
> John Atkinson wrote:
> >
> > "Aidan Kehoe" <kehoea@parhasard.net> wrote...
> > >
> > > Ar an chéad lá is fiche de mí Feabhra, scríobh Jacques Guy:
> > >
> > > > [...] Let us say, then, that the masculine 3rd person singular
pronoun
> > is
> > > > unmarked for sex.
> > >
> > > Let us only say that if we want to ignore hundreds of years of good
> > writers
> > > in English using "they" as a third person singular pronoun where they
didn
> > 't
> > > want to mark for sex.
> >
> > You can leave out that last qualification -- the use of
"they/them/their" as
> > a third person singular pronoun in pre-PC English was never contingent
on
> > whether or not the writer wanted to be ambiguous as to sex.
> >
> > Examples from Jane Austen: (from
> > http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html -- I've picked only
the
> > most obvious examples):
> >
> > "I cannot pretend to be sorry ... that he [Darcy] or that any man
should
> > not be estimated beyond their deserts; but with him I believe it does
not
> > often happen."
> >
> > "Both sisters were uncomfortable enough. Each felt for the other, and of
> > course for themselves; and their mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr.
> > Darcy, and her resolution to be civil to him only as Mr. Bingley's
friend,
> > without being heard by either of them."
> >
> > "they were wise enough to be contented with the house as it was; and
each
> > of them was busy in arranging their particular concerns, and
endeavouring,
> > by placing around them books and other possessions, to form themselves a
> > home." [Refers to women only.]

BTW, in my own dialect (which of course I acquired long before the
resurgence of feminism), "themselves" is ungrammatical here -- I would use
"themself".

> > "The two mothers, though each really convinced that her own son was the
> > tallest, politely decided in favour of the other. The two grandmothers,
with
> > not less partiality, but more sincerity, were equally earnest in support
of
> > their own descendant."
> >
> > Marianne would not let her proceed; and Elinor, satisfied that each
felt
> > their own error, wished to avoid any survey of the past that might
weaken
> > her sister's spirits... [Again, singular "their" refers to each of two
> > women, and so has nothing to do with gender-neutrality.]
>
> Sorry, but all of those are notionally plural

I don't think "plural" is the appropriate word. "Distributive" would be
better. In four of these five examples, the "they" word refers to each the
two women mentioned, taken individually.

> and grammatically can be parsed either way.

The precedent of all but one of the "they" words in question is
grammatically singular ("he or any man" in the first case, "each" in the
other three). How can you parse them as plural? Can one ever parse "each"
or "any man" as plural?

The fifth case ("The two grandmothers ... were ... in support of their own
descendant") is less obvious, since "their" appears to have a plural
precedent "grandmothers", but "descendant" has a semantically singular
possessor. To confuse matters further, in the previous sentence of the same
quote, in an almost parallel construction, Austen uses "her" and not
"their".

> I hope those aren't the examples that feminist
> grammarians have in mind when they say that Jane Austen used "they" as
> neutral-gender singular.

I selected them from a total of seventy-five singular "they"s in the list.
The others were either "generic", and therefore (probably) intended to refer
to anyone, independent of sex, or else referred to one of a set of specific
people who weren't identified in the quote as given (and I couldn't be
bothered chasing up the original books to get context). Some, of course,
did refer to one of a set of identified people consisting of both males and
females.

The point I'm trying to make is that Jane (and everyone else over the last
millenium, other than the "feminists") never thought of "they" as a
convenient "neutral-gender pronoun", in the sense that "he" is said to be by
the prescriptivists. It was just the natural pronoun to use in 3rd singular
contexts when referring individually to a person who is a member of a set.

> > There's just one clear example of gender-free "he" in Jane's writings:
> >
> > "Tho' I do not profess giving many dates, yet as I think it proper to
give
> > some & shall of course make choice of those which it is most necessary
for
> > the Reader to know, I think it right to inform him that her letter to
the
> > King was dated on the 6th of May."

The list actually gave two quotes purporting to have gender-neutral "he",
but the other seemed ambiguous to me, so I didn't include it.

Statistically then, according to list on that site, which purports to be
comprehensive, singular "they" wins over gender-neutral "he" 75 to 2 in
Austen's writings..

John.

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