Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: Damian.Cugley@prg.oxford.ac.UK (Damian Cugley) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Return of the killer pronouns Message-ID: Date: 13 Mar 91 18:25:14 GMT References: <1991Jan29.213937.7568@athena.mit.edu> Organization: Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK Lines: 63 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: zola.ics.uci.edu From: Troy E Daniels Message-Id: <1991Jan29.213937.7568@athena.mit.edu> > In article , bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad) writes: > > Would this work in English, > > or is 'it' too associated with 'things'? > [...] It carries a very strong > implication that the pronoun refers to something non-human. > (Evolutionists and English teachers aren't in complete agreement, > apparently.) I always thought the distinction was as Thomas said -- in English, "it" refers to non-people (e.g., tables and animals) and "he" or "she" refer to people (humans, and animals owned by sentimental people). I never did get around to positing a summary, did I? Well, here's what I have so far: ??, hyr, hyr, hyrself pron. "heer" or "her"? (spotted in at least one comic!) e, ?, eir, eirself the AmSTeX manual, Joy of TeX tey, tem, teir, teirself person, per, pers, perself - Marge Piercy, in WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME (used in a Utopia as a *replacement* for he/she -- all persons are referred to as "person"). Marge Piercy's Utopia makes interesting reading. The only one mentioned by more than one person. co, co's, coself mun, mun's, munself [The apostrophes ought to be dropped from these for consitency with hers, its and theirs.] You can have endless pointless arguments about whether "they" can be used as a gender-unknown singular pronoun (as a programmer I'd be tempted to say if it can hold two people of unknown gender, it can surely hold one :^>). By "pointless arguments", I means ones about whether established usage of "they" was originally Correct(tm) English and was squashed by Victorians in favour of "he" as gender-neutral. Using the habits of long-dead nutters as your main criterion of how a language should be organized is a little silly, IMO. [Too bad the Vics didn't decide to have "the plural subsume the singular" while they were at it; the number of repetitions of "...that foo or those foos..." in Acts of Parliment is horrible.] Not that there is any likelyhood of any of the above being added to the language; the informal spoken usage of they is pretty much accepted -- with written English we will simply have to continue squirming when it comes to talking about individuals. (So why am I interested? For use in fiction mainly.) Belated thankx to the people who replied to my original message Damian