On Friday 07 October 2005 06:24 am, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > > [snip] > > "Some village in Texas is missing their idiot". > >
> > I personally found it odd (and essentially > > non-grammatical) not because either the singular or plural forms should > > be mandated but because this one manages to mix them up. So > > > > "Some village in Texas are missing their idiot" > > > > "Some village in Texas is missing its idiot". > > Yes, that's the puppy. > > I think where the people are getting confused is that it is (arguably) > acceptable to use "their" in place of "his or her", as in: In a Texas dialect, "their" is construed to mean "singular third person of indeterminate gender". It's considered rude to use "it" to apply to a sentient, and "his or her" is "PC" (and therefore a great sin ;-) ). What's going on up above, is that "village" is being construed as singular, but also sentient, since it's a group of people. This is a simplification, since the actual grammar fluctuates -- I think this is in the process of happening as the language evolves. Self-conscious Texans simply try to avoid using constructs with an indeterminate third person singular, substituting plurals wherever possible. So it's not very consistent -- and quite a few of us attempt to assimilate our speech to what we think is "Standard American English". But you *will* occasionally hear pronouns here which do not occur in "proper" English, such as "theirself" -- which shows what's going on in the speaker's mind. They know the subject is singular, it's just that you didn't realize that "their" could *be* singular. :-) You also see there, the tendency to normalize reflexive pronouns to the possessive + self form: myself ourselves yourself y'all's selves hisself theirselves herself theirself itself Whereas so-called "proper" English is inconsistent (read "broken"): myself ourselves yourself yourselves himself themselves herself his or her self itself The same thing happened to "you", of course, ages ago, which is why we almost never use the ONE TRUE singular 2nd person, which is "thou". In fact, hardly anyone remembers the correct thou conjugations of verbs anymore. Or even that it *is* singular. I read an really annoying book once which kept trying to say things like "thou are" -- if you're going to use "thou", at least conjugate correctly! It's "thou art". Of course, just to keep y'all on your toes, we Texans have not only construed "their" to singular, but also "you", and added a new plural "y'all". As in "Why can't y'all get y'all's selves together and understand that how a person talks is their own business." "Innit?" Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
