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From: jlg@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.women
Subject: Re: Gender-Specific Pronouns
Message-ID: <19971@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 21-Jan-85 15:42:44 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.19971
Posted: Mon Jan 21 15:42:44 1985
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> >         "That is the only person to ever set foot on Mars.  They loved it!"
> 
> The discussion of gender-free third person singular pronouns is missing
> an important distinction between two contexts.
> 
> In one context, the writer/speaker has a specific person in mind
> and knows the gender of that person. In this case, the use of 'they'
> sounds awkward:
> 
>          John was the only person to ever set foot on Mars.  They loved it!


What nonsense!  If I don't know the person who went to Mars (I just came back
for Venus myself), but I know that SOMEONE went, then how can I possibly
know the gender of that person.  There are a lot of cases where you don't
have a particular person in mind but you know that the person is unique
(only one of them).  Since the gender of this unique person is unknown the
people on this net would have me use 'THEY/THEIR' as the pronoun for this
person.  BUT THERE'S ONLY ONE!!!!  This is the case of the use of 'they'
that sounds awkward - because it IS awkward.  I wont use it.

J. Giles