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Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Monday, March 8, 2004, 7:40
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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Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>