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The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language discusses the prescriptivist argument that they is a plural pronoun and that the use of they with a singular "antecedent" therefore violates the rule of agreement between antecedent and pronoun, but takes the view that they, though primarily plural, can also be singular in a secondary extended sense ...
The word there is a dummy pronoun in some clauses, chiefly existential (There is no god) and presentational constructions (There appeared a cat on the window sill). The dummy subject takes the number (singular or plural) of the logical subject (complement), hence it takes a plural verb if the complement is plural.
Old English had a single third-person pronoun hē, which had both singular and plural forms, and they wasn't among them. In or about the start of the 13th century, they was imported from a Scandinavian source (Old Norse þeir, Old Danish, Old Swedish þer, þair), in which it was a masculine plural demonstrative pronoun.
Professor Whitney in his Essentials of English Grammar recommends the German original stating "there is an English version, but it is hardly to be used." (p. vi) Meyer-Myklestad, J. (1967). An Advanced English Grammar for Students and Teachers. Universitetsforlaget-Oslo. p. 627. Morenberg, Max (2002). Doing Grammar, 3rd edition. New York ...
This occurs in English with the third-person singular pronouns, where (simply put) he is used when referring to a man, she to a woman, singular they to a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified at the time that the pronoun is being used or to a person who does not identify as either a man or a woman, and it to something inanimate or an ...
The third-person singular personal pronouns (and their possessive forms) are gender specific: he/him/his (masculine gender, used for men, boys, and male animals), she/her(s) (feminine gender, for women, girls, and female animals), the singular they/them/their(s) (common gender, used for people or animals of unknown, irrelevant, or non-binary ...