My sense of cacophony is all about grammar, not phonology. But the claim that 'they' has long functioned as a singular reference sent me to my Random House Dictionary. I was surprised to read this in the entry for THEY:
"-Usage. Long before the use of generic HE was condemned as sexist, the pronouns THEY, THEIR, and THEM were used in educated speech and in all but the most formal writing to refer to indefinite pronouns and to singular nouns of general personal reference, probably because such nouns are often not felt to be exclusively singular: If anyone calls, tell them I'll be back at six. Everyone began looking for their books at once. Such use is not a recent development, nor is it a mark of ignorance. Shakespeare, Swift, Shelley, Scott, and Dickens, as well as many other English and American writers, have used THEY and its forms to refer to singular antecedents. Already widespread in the language (though still rejected as ungrammatical by some), this use of THEY, THEIR, and THEM is increasing in all but the most conservatively edited American English. This increased use is at least partly impelled by the desire to avoid the sexist implications of HE as a pronoun of general reference." How's that for pedigree? But I see no mention here of subject - verb agreement. The examples here dance around that question altogether. . . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile jo.skip.robin...@sce.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 5:56 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: OT STCK question In <sn1pr0101mb15203f9534e7496dce78c073ce...@sn1pr0101mb1520.prod.exchangelabs.com>, on 06/12/2015 at 05:31 PM, J O Skip Robinson <jo.skip.robin...@sce.com> said: >I have no problem with 'they/them' as genderless generic pronouns. That's good, because the usage goes back hundreds of years. OTOH, I cringe when I hear "media is" or, worse, "medias are". >But failure of number agreement is linguistic cacophony. Don't read any Hebrew religous books in the original; you'll get hit in the face with what you call cacophony. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
