whizzball1

Myriad Reality

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Whatever.

@Extra

I'm sorry if I'm annoying you, but at this point I'm genuinely curious as to which one of us is right, and I'm determined to follow this discussion to the end. The method I most like of disproving something is by disproving every argument that it is true, and therefore if I happen upon an argument that a traditionally masculine pronoun has been used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun prior to Chaucer's use of a plural pronoun as a gender-neutral singular pronoun that I cannot disprove, I will rethink my position. (Still never going to stop using "they" and "their" for that, though, because me likes it.)

Myriad Reality

These arguments somewhat annoy me. Not going to lie. I don't find them amusing nor entertaining at all. But, I'm not on OOC all the time so I can't complain.

@Extra

I was just about to say that it's not an argument, but David beat me to it.

Myriad Reality

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Not when we have one account of it. It could be a literary error for all we know. And if that's the only piece of ancient literature that we have that uses "their" as singular, it's safe to assume the rest of them used "his."

Old English actually had a neutral term. Middle English had a semi-neutral term, which is connected to the modern term "he."
"The third person singular neuter (it, also found in the older form hit) relates to the possessive his (not its!)"
nativlang.com/middle-english/middle-en..

(As am I, but I'm not willing to spend as much time on it.)

@Legend

It's not safe to assume the rest of them used "his" as a gender-neutral singular if there are no references that use "his" as a gender-neutral singular. I'm saying that we have a reference of "their" being used as a gender-neutral singular in Chaucer, but there are no references of "his" used like that, so it's actually much safer to assume that "their" was the common usage, at least with the knowledge that we have at the moment. You might say that we can look into somewhat later English literature to find uses of "he/his" and "they/their" as a gender-neutral singular and weigh which one is used most often, and I'll point to the many examples of "they/their" as the gender-neutral singular by respected writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, and the lack of examples of the other.

I was considering mentioning that, but I thought you would note that that corresponds to our use of "it". In fact, in Middle and Old English, nouns actually did have genders, so the neuter pronoun "hit" corresponded to nouns considered neuter, not both masculine and feminine.

As an aside, I'll cite Susanne Wagner in "Gender in English Pronouns: Myth and Reality" where she states that "there was an extended period of time in the history of the English language when the choice of a supposedly masculine personal pronoun (him) said nothing about the gender of the referent." This could be taken to mean that "him" referred to both males and females, but her next statement clarifies: "It could be masculine, male, neuter, or asexual..." No mention is made of "him" ever referring to females. Therefore, even though you could perhaps say that the neuter "hit" is related to the masculine "him", you could not say in any capacity that either was related to the feminine "sche[o]". Therefore, we're back to the challenge of finding a gender-neutral singular pronoun that referred to both females and males.

Myriad Reality

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I read that.

When there are two options, and we know for sure that they did have a word to refer to singular genderless pronouns, once one is dated to the first usage, there's no choice but for the other to exist before it. It's also similar to the IVT in Calculus, ie. an airtight argument.

@Legend

What? We haven't dated the first usage. We noticed that Chaucer used it in the fourteenth century. That doesn't mean it was the earliest usage; in fact, it implies that the use of "they" could have been the common usage in speech (after all, literature is our only source of information on common language of the past).

Furthermore, I already cited the earliest mention of "he" as a singular indefinite pronoun in literature; that is, Wilson in the sixteenth century, and he was only giving a passing remark saying that he thought it would be better if man was placed before woman in grammar. But my quote from Chaucer is a quote of actual usage, not just a quote of someone writing about theoretical usage. But if you can find me a literary quote where "he" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun before Chaucer in the fourteenth century, I'll reluctantly concede.

But you'll be hard-pressed to find that, because Old English was still trying to find an identity by 1066 when the Normans took over Britain. In fact, English literature actually died down until the 1200s, when English began gaining acceptance. In 1362, English became the official language of England, and this is a few years before Chaucer began writing. The reference of "they" in Chaucer's writing came around the 1370s. The earliest English writing of the thirteenth century was Layamon's Brut, a poem describing the history of England, and it does not have any examples of usage of a pronoun referring to both males and females in a singular manner.

(I've been doing my research.)

Myriad Reality

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You see, there's a difference between our claims. You actually have people fervently trying to prove your point, while I do not, because if yours was not the primary usage throughout the history of the English language, my claim is correct by default. Nobody made any attempt to write an article about the use of "he" in the eleventh century, because there's no reason to.

@Legend

Actually, Bodine wrote her paper back in 1975 before the debate was actually becoming a debate, for the purposes of explaining what was happening. It was already accepted that prescriptive grammarians attacked singular "they", and therefore "he" became accepted. Her article is actually considering other things, but her input and quotations are useful to me nevertheless, because it shows that scholars don't need to debate that point. They have it in history.
EDIT: I don't even consider that a good argument. The fact that nobody made an attempt to write an article about the use of "he" in the eleventh century could just as easily imply that they didn't because there was no usage to write about. All it is is a fact, with no specific connotations either way.

Myriad Reality

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English rebates. $20 back.

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Literally all of my research points toward the opposite.

And I was responding in a jokingly true manner.

@Legend

Then cite, so I can see your research.
EDIT: I keep trying to change this so it doesn't sound scornful. I'm not trying to scoff; I'm curious.

Myriad Reality

Ugh, English debates. Thought I'd seen the last of those.

@Heroic

Well-informed English debates. =D

Myriad Reality

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But the difference is the fact that I'm arguing that using "he" as a singular is older. You'll have to fight the English language age to justify that one.

No pulling fast fallacies on me. They won't work.

@Legend

Actually, it's not older. Ann Bodine in "Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar" explains how some nineteenth-century grammarians put forth the idea of using "he" because of social motivation, although at the time the correct usages were either "they" or "he or she". The earliest mentions of the idea are Wilson in 1560 and Poole in 1646 because of their androcentric worldview. "set the man before the woman for maners sake..." -Wilson and "The Masculine gender is more worthy than the Feminine." -Poole. However, it didn't catch on, and the use of "they" from old continued on until 1850, when the British Parliament passed an act that "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females".

I was just joking. Notice the lack of capitalisation and punctuation and the silly face.

Myriad Reality

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The Oxford Dictionaries have an article on the usage, saying that it dates back to the 16th century.

EDIT: I'm considering all of the English language, but that argument is invalid. Simply because an American society awarded it for being accurate doesn't mean that it applies to American linguistics. America can also award a "Best British History Book" prize, but that doesn't translate to being accepted American history.

@Legend

Chaucer uses it much earlier than that, quoted by Jespersen in Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage.

was hoping you wouldn't notice that =P
I realised that just as I posted the edit, but I just shrugged and went on with my school. But if it helps, the Chicago Manual of Style also endorses the usage.

Myriad Reality

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Source.

@Legend

Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Chapter 5, Section 17.2.4 (specifically, pages 491-495).

Yes, I did have that saved for exactly this moment. I knew it would come. not really but still

EDIT: Just in case you say "It's British so it's wrong," the Linguistic Society of America awarded it with the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award, which awards a recently published book for making an "outstanding contribution to the development of our understanding of language and linguistics".