Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

Thomas R. Wier wrote:

>From:    And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
>
>
>>I don't know whether all the epicene
>>pronoun fuss is due simply to prescriptivism or whether there
>>is genuinely a dialect difference with AmE here, such that AmE
>>lacks the BrE solution. (It's hard to tell, what with AmE
>>being so much more prescriptivist in the first place.)
>>
>>
>
>I'm just curious:  on what grounds are you making this
>assertion? Have you noticed that American students of
>yours are more likely to make reference to standards of
>language use than your British students?  (This is not
>to say that one cannot make generalizations about cultures,
>but I wonder whether you have actually looked at some
>empirical data on this which I have not myself seen.)
>
>

No, he meant that AmE doesn't have singular 'they' in standard speech.

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