One of the big problems to me about the recent upswing in talking about gender issues is the use of singular they, when talking about a specific known individual. “Where’s Sam?” “They are over there”:mad:
I was a fan of constructs like ze and hir and hoped one would catch on. It just struck me though that the problem isn’t so much with “they” as the modifying word after it. In such sentences I think people need to start saying “They is over there” and other phases that indicate individuality, the modifying word needs to agree with the number of people being talked about, rather than the word that typically goes after “they”. “They is all by themself” is much less annoying than the typically used “they are all by themselves” construction when talking aboout 1 single person.
I say that I think it’s a lot easier to ignore disagreement between two different sentences than it is to ignore disagreement within the sentence itself. The distance helps. I find your proposal incredibly jarring to read.
Also, I don’t really associate the “they” issue with any recent conversations. That seems to me to have been a problem for as long as I can recall dealing with grammar, and, I presume, much longer.
I can’t say as I’ve ever heard “they” used as a singular pronoun as in the OP. It’s usually used as a neuter pronoun for one or more members of a group, even when the intent is singular: “If a user wishes to print the document, they can press F5.” - or such.
I don’t see any issue with using “they are” to refer to one person.
There is a precedent: “you” was a plural pronoun, and “thou” was the singular form. Now we use “you” as both singular and plural, but we still say “you are” even when speaking to one person - we don’t say “you is.”
That’s the perfectly fine, non-stabby, use of singular they that has been in use forever. However the “they are over there” style use has been gaining a lot of traction recently.
It is quite jarring, but to me is much less so than suddenly talking about a multitude of people when you were previously just talking about one specific individual.
How about we pull out some mangled set theory to help on this one?
“They” always refers to a set. Since a set may have multiple object as members, we assume a plural verb conjugation. Context might establish that the set does in fact only have one object, but it is still referring to a set with the possibility of containing multiple objects.
Words like he/she/it refer to a single object, not a set, not even the set containing only the single object. Since a single object is always singular, we use a singular verb conjugation.
The other option is just to remember that “they” breaks the rules of conjugation. Since all languages contain whole books of such exceptions to the rules, this is hardly unusual.
I was going to say something like that, except I would have said that we don’t say “you art”. “They” just goes with “are” and that’s just the way the language seems to work.
There are a lot of people in the trans/genderqueer community who prefer “they/them” over a gendered pronoun. So while you would not often find yourself saying, “He’ll be here in a minute, just give it to them when they arrive,” you might say, “Sam will be here in a minute, just give it to them when they arrive.”
I don’t like “they” – but it’s pretty standard now.
(Personally, I prefer to go to the extra effort of saying “the person” or “that person” instead of just “they.” “If the next person in line is late, that person bears the responsibility for the delay.”)
I think the idea of saying “they” when you are talking about a specific individual with a known gender is ridiculous.
That said, if you really must use “they” in that circumstance then following it with “are” sounds perfectly normal. As pointed out above, it works for “you”. “Where am I?”, “You are over there.”
You can almost always avoid the use of “they” by re-structuring the sentence. However, I move we simply eliminate gendered pronouns from the language and just use “it.”
I agree. And the “ze” and “hir” type efforts at creating neologisms for gender neutral pronouns make me stabby, too. “They” is a perfectly good and well understood gender-neutral pronoun that has been used in English for hundreds of years. That said, I have never heard it, either, used as in the OP (“Where’s Sam? They are over there.”)
There’s precedent for verbs to be conjugated per the pronoun’s traditional number rather than the actual number. ‘You are’ instead of ‘thou art’ derives from a 2nd-person plural adopted out of politeness even when the ‘you’ is just a singleton.
Similarly Queen Victoria is (apocryphally) alleged to have uttered the pompous ‘We are not amused,’ not ‘We is not’ or ‘We am not.’
I would however apply the correct actual number to the reflexive pronoun; thus
*‘They are all by themself.’ *
ETA: Although slightly controversial, I see that the Oxford Dictionary condones this:
“The singular form themself, first recorded in the 14th century.”
*