Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

Nik Taylor wrote:

>"Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
>
>
>>No, we use "is" all the time -- though, as with y'all, it's normally
>>a clitic.  The problem is that number agreement is just not very well
>>understood in the English speaking world.  It's not that Americans use
>>morphological number and Brits use semantic number:  we both say "the
>>United States *is*", afterall.
>>
>>
>
>Is it usual to use plural with The United States in Australia?  The
>reason I ask is that a book on Japanese history, written in Australia,
>had the phrase "... in the 1860s as the United States tore themselves
>apart in their Civil War" (the only number-relavent reference to the
>United States in the book)
>
>The book was originally written in 1973, with a revision in 1997.
>
>

I suspect that's a nuance.  Here it refers to the individual states
breaking bonds with each other.

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