mind grapes

Is it a bad sign if I get a weirdly large amount of enjoyment out of making trees with qtree in LaTeX?

Typing all those brackets is the most tedious thing in the universe, but the tree output is just so satisfying. Plus using LaTeX means I’m avoiding Microsoft Word, which is always my absolute favorite activity.

(Oh, you thought you were a nerd? Did I mention I’m doing this on a Saturday night during my spring break? Yeah.)

polygl0t asked you: Have you written a post about singular ‘they’? I’m having an argument with my girlfriend over this.

lesserjoke:

I haven’t written a post on it, but I did just teach my students about it a couple of classes ago. ‘Singular they’ is a linguistic feature that many English speakers employ conversationally, but is often attacked as “incorrect,” particularly when it shows up in writing. Essentially, it’s using the plural pronoun “they” (as well as “them” and “their”) to refer to a single person. It’s controversial because some people think these words should only ever be used to refer to more than one individual.

So, is it unacceptable? As usual, I have a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is of course not, because language doesn’t work that way. No linguistic form is inherently unacceptable, and anything that a speaker intentionally produces is grammatical for them, and successfully serves the primary purpose of language: to communicate ideas with other people.

The long answer looks at the many, many reasons why singular they is a regular part of the standard English language. Firstly: even calling this pronoun use ‘singular’ is overlooking the fact that the pronoun is still grammatically plural. This can be seen in the verb agreement in the following sentences:

1. Bill left his bag on the table, and I hope he comes back for it.
2. Some students left their bags on the table, and I hope they come back for them.
3. Some student left their bag on the table, and I hope they come back for it.

The ‘singular they’ in Sentence 3 is grammatically plural, because it is the subject of the verb ‘come’ and that verb is inflected for a plural subject. If ‘they’ in Sentence 3 were grammatically singular, that verb would be in the singular agreement form ‘comes’ as in Sentence 1. So using a ‘singular they’ is not violating any grammatical rules of subject-verb agreement in English, and it is not changing the pronoun from a singular paradigm to a plural one. All that has changed is the referent of the pronoun.

So, is there a problem with plural-marked noun phrases having singular referents? Take a look at the subjects in the following standard English sentences, each of which refers to a single entity but is grammatically plural (as can be seen by the verb agreement):

1. My glasses are on the nightstand.
2. These scissors are sharp!

Standard English also has some plural-marked nouns with singular referents that are grammatically singular:

1. Checkers is my favorite game.
2. Measles is a terrible disease.

And plenty of singular-marked nouns with plural referents:

1. The army has defeated the enemy.
2. This band sounds awesome.

Not only that, but there’s variation across countries. The subjects in the above two sentences were grammatically singular, but the following sentences, which are acceptable in British English, have singular-marked nouns with plural referents that are grammatically plural:

1. The gang are protecting their turf.
2. The committee meet once a week.

The conclusion of all this is simple. There may be a tendency in standard English for referent, form, and grammatical agreement to match one another in number, but there are plenty of cases where this is not true. One can hardly object to the plural pronoun ‘they’ referring to a singular individual without also objecting to the above instances.

Second, singular they ishighly useful. The other third-person singular pronouns in standard English require their speaker to make a comment about the gender of the referent, identifying that person as either masculine or feminine. There may be many reasons why a speaker would not wish to do so, ranging from not considering the person’s gender relevant to knowing that the person does not self-identify within the traditional male-female gender binary. When I find singular they most useful, however, is when the referent’s gender is simply unknown. Consider again the following sentence:

1. Some student left their bag on the table, and I hope they come back for it.

In this case, I do not know who left the bag on the table. If I couldn’t use singular they as I have done above, I would have to refer to this person in one of the following ways:

1. Some student left his bag on the table, and I hope he comes back for it.
2. Some student left her bag on the table, and I hope she comes back for it.
3. Some student left his or her bag on the table, and I hope he or she comes back for it.
4. Some student left that student’s bag on the table, and I hope that student comes back for it.

Sentence 1 and 2 assert a gender that is not actually known to me, and may thus be inaccurate. There is also an argument that that sort of sexist language — that is, treating people of an unspecified gender as a certain gender by default — encourages sexist thinking, and we probably want to avoid that. Sentences 3 and 4 are less inaccurate as well as less sexist, but far more cumbersome to say or write than the elegant singular they.

Finally, I’ll bring my argument in favor of singular they back around to usage. Many, many speakers of English utilize this feature in their spoken and written language. If we want to be good scientists, we need to adopt an objective, descriptivist approach to language, and view it as it is actually spoken rather than as we might want it to be. Singular they is out there in the language — and it has been for quite some time. I’d invite you, in closing, to consider one last example sentence. This one was written in 1595 by a Mr. William Shakespeare, in his play Romeo and Juliet:

1. Arise; one knocks. / … Hark, how they knock!

Juliet doesn’t know the identity of the person on the other side of her door, and thus she doesn’t know the gender either. Her solution is the same one I would adopt today: she uses the grammatically plural pronoun ‘they’ to refer to a single individual.

word.