Re: use of he/she/they. Less vague.

["Tamminga, Ernie" <et -at- DSC -dot- COM>]

Arrggh. I hate to re-post, but I mangled a key sentence to such an
extent that I reversed its meaning. Here's the fixed  version...
--------
>I sent the following off-line to Barclay, but since there's so many
>instant responses here in the group, I'm re-posting publicly, so that my
>two pennies don't fail to fall into the jar...
>==================================
>
>[In speaking about declaring a "generic singular"], I was being
>partially facetious. But seriously, folks...
>
>In a sentence like
>
>     "The end-user can obtain help by calling their account
>representative"...
>
>I would personally consider substituting "his" in place of "their" to be
>at least as WRONG as letting this disagreement-in-number go by.
>(Because I personally think that to maintain that the male
>pronoun "includes everybody" is a more serious language error than the
>error of number inconsistency.)
>
>(That sentence could be easily fixed by using "an" or "the" in place of
>"their"... but I've often happened across sentences that wouldn't be so
>easy to fix.  Just can't think of a better example right now, it being
>mid-afternoon...)
>
>I was once ruminating on actually proposing a formal generic singular,
>in which the SPOKEN words would sound exactly like the plural, but in
>which the SPELLING would be different:
>
>     "theye"  as the generic singular personal pronoun
>     "theire" as the generic singular possessive
>     "themme" as the generic singular objective
>
>That's what I had in the back of my mind with my semifacetious remark.
>With that usage, a sentence like "If the user needs assistance, theye
>can call theire account representative" would be the correct usage of
>the generic singular. (And it would have the advantage of matching,
>"sonically", the way lots of people already talk, especially if they're
>trying to avoid the false-generic problem and are willing to slip into
>vague use of plurals in order to do so.)
>
>A former teacher of mine, Raimundo Panikkar, often noted that English
>(not alone among languages) does not have an "utrum".
>
>That is, we have a "NE - utrum" (i.e., neuter... NOT-either); but we
>don't have an "utrum" (i.e., EITHER...a true generic singular).
>
>In actual practice, alas, I conform to the more usual solution of
>rewording a sentence so that I don't have to use a personal pronoun when
>I'm talking about a generic-person subject.  (No problem, obviously, if
>one is talking about a SPECIFIC person-subject, who is either male or
>female.)
>
>
>
>--------
>Ernie Tamminga
>Director, InfoEngineering
>Digital Sound Corporation
>-----------------------------------------------
>Opinions expressed are my own, and not necessarily those of Digital
>Sound Corporation
>
>>
>
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