Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

From:    Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
> When I learned Ancient Greek at school, we were
> teached the following canonic example:
>
> *Ta zoa trekhei* (omega in zoa)
>
> meaning 'the animals run', or 'are running'.
>
> What's interesting is that 'zoa' in a neuter 3p, and
> trekhei a 3s.
Yes, it's not surprising cross-lingustically that there
might be a number-mismatch for nouns low in animacy;  this
is quite common.  However, in Greek this was a regular rule,
but in no English dialect is it regular.  The peculiar fact
is that "The United States is" contradicts the pattern of
*both* dialects.  The morphological plural would predict
"are" for American dialects (and indeed this *was* the agreement
used before the late 19th century), and the semantic collective
would predict "are" as well for Brits (assuming those are
the right generalizations for the respect dialects).

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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