In my head, it seems like sentence A below is a “normal” use of singular they, while sentence B below is abnormal. In other words, sentence A seems like something people actually say, while sentence B seems like something no one says. But how accurate are my intuitions here?
A. “Everyone on the flight needs to return to their seat.”
B. (Where Pat is a person familiar to the speaker but of unknown gender.) “Pat needs to return to their seat.”
My intuitions about those sentences agree with yours. Here, however is an example of what I think is an acceptable use of singular they:
“If anyone is standing up, they need to return to their seat.”
(Note that if you could be sure you were addressing only males you would say “he needs to return to his seat”. “Anyone,” unlike “everyone,” is singular.)
You’re correct. The singular they corresponds to a singular pronoun, not a singular proper noun.
You are correct using your examples. However, ‘Everyone’ in your example isn’t single regardless of what the books say. It refers to multiple people so ‘their’ matches it. It is a condensed form of saying everyone’s name individually and that is how our brain parses it. “Everyone on the flight needs to return to their seat.” = “Sam, Betty, Billy, John, Sally, Jennifer, and Debbie need to return to their seat”. The alternative is “his or her seat” which is awkward and one reason English allows such substitutions.
I don’t agree with this political correctness. Or simply, “You who are standing up need to return to your seats.”
Then wouldn’t it actually be more correct to say, "Everyone needs to return to their seats(plural)?
For lack of a better word in English, I’m fairly comfortable with “they” as the singular in cases in which the gender of the person is unknown.
“My phone just rang once. They must have hung up.”
“Whoever wrote this article doesn’t have their facts straight.”
These sound fine to me, though some pedants may disagree. Your ‘B’ example sounds wrong because, presumably, we know who Pat is, and could use “his” or “her” appropriately.
I think “they” is fine for a known person of unknown gender, e.g., “Someone called Pat just sent me an email. With that name, I don’t know if they are a man or a woman.” However, you might rephrase: “With that name, I don’t know if Pat is a man or a woman.”
Using “they, their, them” as singular pronouns in sentences such as “The person who knows the answer should raise their hand” is just plain bad grammar. Here “his” or “her” or “his or her” is correct. Of course since we may not know the gender of the person involved, we tend to use “they, their, them” because the plurals have no gender while the singulars do.
I think that we should develop words for these situations, just as “Ms.” was invented for use in the situation where you don’t know if a woman is married. I propose the term “thone” (pronounced “thun”), or it could be written “th’one”, to mean “that one” when the gender is ambiguous but the person is singular. For instance, “I gave the money to thone,” or, “Thone told me the answer,” or, “It was thone’s book.”
No, it isn’t, or at least not in every variety of English. Grammar is defined by how people actually talk and, in general, use language; that’s why it is so interesting for linguists to study. If it were just arbitrary rules handed down by people who don’t know any better, why would anyone bother?
No, language is an interesting field largely because it defines itself; people immersed in the language use it and figure out what works, with linguists and lexicographers left to keep up as best they can.
Why? We have a perfectly good word already: they.
Grammar changes over time, and this one is here to stay.
You can’t really invent such things on purpose. It has been tried by academic types and it never caught on. Language evolves on its own and much of grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive of the way people use it. Ms. wasn’t invented on purpose either except as a spelling which is very different than speech. It is just an alternate spelling of Miss which was already used to describe any female over a certain age in many areas regardless of marital status. Children have called female adults Miss X for a very long time rather than by their first name as a show of respect because it is easy to say.
Ok, need new glasses here…thought this said “How do people use Singulair…”
It certainly is here to stay: the usage is around 500 years old. OED gives a couple of examples from the early 16th century, e.g., this from 1535:
Oh, but that makes it horrible grammar, and evidence our declining standards are infecting retroactively!
Yes – I’d have ended the sentence with “themself” rather than “them selues”, but the good bishop – who is a saint in the eyes of the Catholic Church – may have been influenced by Latin grammar there.
Our “brain” can parse the meaning as plural while still employing singular grammar:
Everyone has to return to their seat.
vs.
*Everyone have to return to their seat.
We need to recognize that grammar isn’t always representational, nor does it have to be.
I don’t think Ms. is an alternate spelling of Miss. It is pronounced “mizz” rather than “miss” and was meant to be a form that could be used for Miss or Mrs. In the South, people would tend to say “mizz” when they didn’t know if someone was married, or, as you say, as a form of respect. Gloria Steinem purposely created this spelling for “mizz” to erase the chauvinistic distinction between Miss and Mrs., and it certainly has caught on. Many other invented terms, such as “yuppie,” or “tweet” have also caught on. So language doesn’t always have to evolve slowly. I hope each reader out there will decide for thoneself.
I’m thorry I can’t donate to your group. Thone came through here yesterday collecting for thagomizer victims.
…
I often wish there was a widespread, acceptable gender-neutral short version of ‘him or her’ and the like. Would save a lot of rewriting, particularly when the target audience includes a range of high-end sensitivities. But nothing comes close, so ‘they’ and ‘their’ and whatnot prevail for the time being.
Yeah, that’s how people really talk. :rolleyes:
Political correctness is rather beside the point of the question, but anyway, your version is just as politically correct as mine or either of Frylock’s and as a bonus it tortures colloquial usage.
People were using constructions like “If anyone is standing up, they need to return to their seat,” long before “political correctness” was ever conceived, back in the days when nobody ever objected to the neuter masculine. Nevertheless, even back then (I am old enough to remember) the singular “they” often seemed more appropriate.