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A study of whether "singular they" is more "difficult" to understand than gendered pronouns found that "singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he or she, particularly when the antecedent is nonreferential" (e.g. anybody, a nurse, or a truck driver) rather than referring to a specific person (e.g. a runner I knew or my ...
Singular they is a use of they as an epicene (gender-neutral) pronoun for a singular referent. [7] [8] In this usage, they follows plural agreement rules (they are, not *they is), but the semantic reference is singular. Unlike plural they, singular they is only used for people. For this reason, it could be considered to have personal gender.
In (16), singular they occurs with a singular antecedent of any gender, with no restriction on description or name. In examples (14-16), subscript i indicates coreference ; moreover, examples such as (15) and (16) are sometimes referred to as 'referential they'.
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl.
Singular they/them/their pronouns are appropriate to use in reference to any person who goes by them. If a person exclusively goes by neopronouns, such as ze/hir, then singular they should also generally be used instead of neopronouns when referring to that individual, though their neopronouns should usually be mentioned in their biography (in the main prose or in a footnote).
An example of forming phrases in a coequal manner would be using husband and wife instead of man and wife. [17] Examples of discontinuing the collective use of terms in English when referring to those with unknown or indeterminate gender as singular they, and using humans, people, or humankind, instead of man or mankind. [18]
For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela ("you two and I"). [4] Some languages do not have third-person personal pronouns, instead using demonstratives (e.g. Macedonian) [5] or full noun phrases.
The singular they emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural they. Even when used with singular meaning, they takes a plural verb: If attacked, the victim should remain exactly where they are. Due to this supposed grammatical inconsistency, use of singular they was discouraged by some grammarians during the nineteenth and ...