don't flinch, marilyn!

[walkingshadow]

SHAKESPEARE USED THEY WITH SINGULAR ANTECEDENTS SO THERE

By all means, avoid using they with singular antecedents in your own writing and speaking if you feel you cannot bear it. Language Log is not here to tell you how to write or speak. But don't try to tell us that it's grammatically incorrect. Because when a construction is clearly present several times in Shakespeare's rightly admired plays and poems, and occurs in the carefully prepared published work of just about all major writers down the centuries, and is systematically present in the unreflecting conversational usage of just about everyone including Sean Lennon, then the claim that it is ungrammatical begins to look utterly unsustainable to us here at Language Log Plaza. This use of they isn't ungrammatical, it isn't a mistake, it's a feature of ordinary English syntax that for some reason attracts the ire of particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificators, and we don't buy what they're selling.

Comments

[leksa.livejournal.com]

Har, I thought about linking to that article as well - the "so there" just makes a girl's day, really.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

that's totally the best part. vindication, baybee! righteous vindication! we're a frustrated people.

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

You know, those Language Log writers are all gonna be in town this week.

Can I just say, WHEEE?

*must remember not to fangirl, must remember not to fangirl...*

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

hee! they'd be all, "we have groupies now?!" and who doesn't like groupies? have fun!

[cereta.livejournal.com]

The National Council of Teachers of English endorsed the use of "they" with indefinite antecedents years ago. If only people listened...

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

yes, if only. well, the particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificators tend not to listen to *anyone*—they're idiosyncratic authorities in their own minds, and usually nothing can sway them; they also tend not to do their research, and probably wouldn't have heard about the endorsement from the national council of teachers of english. language log, of course, would consider their approval superfluous next to the evidence of the writings and conversations of native english speakers.

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

I stick by my grammar. It's not hard! Sentences that create that kind of situation ought to be restructured anyway. [sticks out tongue]

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

*blinks* hi, and did we read the same thing here? it's not a matter of hard, and it's not a matter of awkward or esoteric structure: that's the POINT, that it's a frequently-used construction that for some reason certain prescriptivists have decided they don't like, and then they try to insist that people 1) don't use it and 2) shouldn't use it. they have a heap of evidence against them for the first one, and no leg to stand on with the second. i do not buy what you're selling.

i'd do things to the tongue you stuck out, but it would just turn into a three stooges routine. :P

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

We did read the same thing, and people abuse the language they speak all the time, but just because something is in the vernacular, doesn't mean it functions optimally. Confusing singular antecedents by pluralizing the reference to them later on is not productive, especially when one tends to ramble like I do.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

*reads* *re-reads* *re-reads again* no, i still think you're completely missing the point. but i also think it's a fundamental missing of the point, and it's an instance of the even more fundamental should vs. is problem that you seem to run up against periodically. please allow me to introduce you to my very good friend bertrand russell*, who tried to analyze language mathematically and logically, by (for one thing) developing ingenious methods for assigning truth value to sentences that otherwise defied true/false designation; except that he failed miserably, and what he ended up talking about—and this is important—had nothing to do with anything like the language people speak. i'm not even talking about college professors or william safire or otherwise pedantic speakers, i mean it had nothing to do with *language*. there is no such thing as "abusing the language you speak" or, what, optimal functionality, unless you're operating from the philosophy that there is a gold-standard of language, an, i don't know, prototype language (i.e. a platonic ideal), from which any deviation is a deterioration. but, hi, hello, there is no prototype language. there's definitely no prototype for english, so to keep implying that there is one is baffling.

language is what people speak. you can make whatever arguments about optimal functionality and dream up whatever whimsical rules you want, and it'll drive me and geoffrey pullum absolutely fucking INSANE, but what mitigates that (and what i find ultimately HILARIOUS) is that you'll never win! i might get het up about it, but language doesn't care. people are going to speak the way they're going to speak, and the evolution of language will go whichever way it will, and nothing prescriptivists have ever done has ever been able to change it. which in itself ought to tell them something, but never does.

also, 1) obviously using "they" with singular antecedents *isn't* confusing, as people have been doing it for, you know, HUNDREDS OF YEARS, confusion-free. you aren't confused when you read or hear sentences that do it (i'd bet the house you don't even notice it 99 times out of 100), and don't even try to convince me that you don't do it yourself, because all i'd need is a tape recorder to prove otherwise; 2) it's not a matter of productivity, except that it's de facto productive, because people use it and understand it. and if you're using it in the linguistic sense of productivity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_(linguistics)), i.e. "the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process" (though i don't think you are), it is, of course, extremely productive; and 3) i don't see how your rambling should lead to grammatical proscriptions for everyone else. if you feel the need to clarify your own speech or writing, go right ahead. i think you'll find it has nothing to do with this.

* totally not my friend.