Pronouns

[Lorehead]

But the first example, in which I named various musicians, did twist your ear? Why the difference?

The "each" in your example, while grammatically singular, is semantically plural: replacing it with "all" wouldn't change the meaning. (Edit: That's the traditional usage of singular their, not so much the current one.) I strongly suspect that most native speakers would say "they" rather than "he" in this case, at least in idiomatic speech.

Conversely, do any of the following sentences sound right to you?

• *A woman stepped in and closed their umbrella.
• *Although all the husbands were tempted, each stayed faithful to their wife.
• *Chris, an only child, doted on their parents.

If any of them don't, as I suspect is the case, their is not a general-purpose singular pronoun.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

"Hillary Clinton is a female" sounds right. As does "George Bush is a male". You could ALSO say "Hillary Clinton is a woman" and "George Bush is a man", but I don't see why it would be more correct to do so.

Because "male" and "female" are much more strongly adjectives. "The female of the species is more deadly than the male" poetically omits a noun like "half" or "member", but those two sentences above make my brain ask "A female what? A male what?" - because the answer can be many things, depending on the context.

"Politician"? "Criminal", if you tend that way? "Jerkface"? "Human"?

 

[Agback]

I don't mind seeing genders arbitrarily attached to classes. But I would rather have seen them used to flag some more significant distinction. Maybe players could have been feminine and characters masculine. Or maybe casters could have been feminine and targets (and non-casters in general) could have been masculine.

The sooner English sheds all gender, or perhaps adopts a sensible set of genders such as animate and inanimate, the better. It is an ideal to be wished second only to the recovery of a distinction of number in the second person. I even rate it ahead of the inclusive/exclusive distinction in the first person plural.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Conversely, do any of the following sentences sound right to you?

• *A woman stepped in and closed their umbrella.
• *Although all the husbands were tempted, each stayed faithful to their wife.
• *Chris, an only child, doted on their parents.

If any of them don't, as I suspect is the case, their is not a general-purpose singular pronoun.

Of course, no-one has claimed it is; but I find "a courier stepped in and closed their umbrella" much more logical and pleasant than "a courier stepped in and closed his umbrella", because not all couriers are male and I don't like my language implying that masculinity is the default condition of humanity.

 

[Agback]

The "language restricts perception" concept was in vogue for a while, but is falling out of favor and may be entirely false.

To anyone who is interested in checking out the state of play for himself or herself might find it useful to know that the technical term for this concept is the 'Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis'.

 

[prosfilaes]

The same principle applies to the use of 'his': the context shows which meaning applies. Insisting that the word 'his' must always carry only a masculine meaning when it clearly is being used otherwise is silly, IMO.

Clearly? In "Each actor must go to his trailer", does that include females? To tell whether "his" is
gender-neutral requires a great deal of context and can be completely ambigious.

The other thing that makes me question whether "his" is really gender-netural is the sentence "Each nurse must wash his hands." It is ungrammatical in my idiolect, my personal dialect of English; it should be "each nurse must wash her hands." And if "she" must be used with "nurse", then I question whether the fact that "he" must be used with "firefighter" is really gender-neutral. I'm curious; when you form sentences with a generic nurse without thinking about it, do you really use he?

 

[Agback]

Of course, no-one has claimed it is; but I find "a courier stepped in and closed their umbrella" much more logical and pleasant than "a courier stepped in and closed his umbrella", because not all couriers are male and I don't like my language implying that masculinity is the default condition of humanity.

The problem is that English is falling between two stools. In a language with a complete and vigorous set of genders, the pronoun used for a courier would depend on the gender of the word 'courier' in the same way that the pronoun used for a table depends on the gender of the word 'table'. No-one would muddle gender and sex, and it would not occur to anyone to infer that a courier was necessarily male or female because 'courier' were masculine or feminine and the pronoun used for 'courier' agreed in gender with its antecedent. On the other hand, if English had thoroughly purged its genders, pronouns would need inflection only for case (that being necessary and sufficient to avoid ambiguity), and the problem would never arise.

But gender in English is degenerate, and the use of gendered pronouns with ungendered antecedents (agreeing according to the sex of the referent instead of the gender of the word) is a recipe for confusion. If only the genders of pronouns had vanished with the genders of common nouns!

 

[Terwox]

I prefer the White Wolf method actually... just use she/her.

Only using masculine terms is sexist, but only using feminine terms is sexist AND amusing.

Of the poll options given, I like D&D's method the best.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Clearly? In "Each actor must go to his trailer", does that include females?

Yes, of course.

The other thing that makes me question whether "his" is really gender-netural is the sentence "Each nurse must wash his hands." It is ungrammatical in my idiolect, my personal dialect of English; it should be "each nurse must wash her hands."

IMO, the "gender baggage" in your example is attached to "nurse" rather than "his." Rightly or wrongly, the word nurse (and similar words like "librarian") carries an implicit feminine gender, so you expect a feminine pronoun. Replace "nurse" with a truly ambiguous term that carries no gender, like "employee," and the sentence sounds fine: ambiguous subject and ambiguous pronoun.

I'm curious; when you form sentences with a generic nurse without thinking about it, do you really use he?

No, I'd probably use "she," because I tend to think of the word "nurse" as being feminine, rather than of ambiguous gender. If I didn't have that bias about the word "nurse," and considered it as being of ambiguous gender, then I'd certainly use "he," just as I do with words like "employee."

 

[Lorehead]

The other thing that makes me question whether "his" is really gender-netural is the sentence "Each nurse must wash his hands." It is ungrammatical in my idiolect, my personal dialect of English; it should be "each nurse must wash her hands."

If you're about to say, "And just imagine how this must make male nurses feel," then I congratulate you on a splendid piece of satire. You are of course the sole and arbitrary judge of what "is ungrammatical in my idiolect," but you can hardly expect anyone else to take that seriously as a debating point. Change "idiolect" to "Weltanschauung," and you'll have an all-purpose license to belive anything.

As for the larger question, I would answer yes. When this usage caught on, his was also the singular neuter genitive, and the word its hadn't been invented. You are attempting to redefine words that hundreds of millions of people have continuously used for hundreds of years, and then insist on that basis that we really mean something other than what we said.

Let's look at a real-world example instead of a contrived one: "Leslie Pinney, a member of the Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 board, didn't deserve the tarring she got when she tried to exercise board control over what students are required to read.... When a teacher makes up a required reading list, he is making a judgment about what is good for his students." (Chicago Tribune editorial, June 12, emphasis added) It is not plausible to me that the author believed that all schoolteachers are male, thought of schoolteaching as a characteristically masculine profession, or had a mental image of a man when writing that editorial.

Of course, no-one has claimed it is;

I'm glad, then, that we agree that their is not an adequate replacement for the generic his in many contexts.

but I find "a courier stepped in and closed their umbrella" much more logical and pleasant than "a courier stepped in and closed his umbrella", because not all couriers are male and I don't like my language implying that masculinity is the default condition of humanity.

That is not what the generic he signifies, any more than the subjunctive "If I were ...." signifies the past tense. What you find pleasant is a matter of opinion and not subject to debate; most native speakers, I think, would disagree and consider that particular sentence nonstandard. (Edit: More) "logical" it is not; the antecedent is grammatically singular, semantically singular and a specific individual, so even the authors who did use singular they centuries ago would not have used it here. No one seriously proposes reviving Early Modern English, even where it would indubitably make the language more expressive, consistent and logical (by bringing back thou, thee and ye, for example). But, if we're going to selectively cite tradition and logic as a justification for our own prescriptive edicts, shouldn't we at least get the details right?