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Re: 3rd person pronouns (was: a question about names)

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Thursday, September 30, 2004, 21:19
On Sep 30, 2004, at 9:35 PM, Ray Brown wrote:
> And English, and many other languages, have a problem when we mean > either > male or female. The tradition in the past has generally been to use the > masculine forms "If everybody did his duty...."; but there has been a > drift in English from at least the 19th cent. to use 'they' with a > singular, epicene meaning "if everybody does their duty...." - but > this is > still frowned upon by pedants (and is occasionally the source of YAEDT > thread on Conlang :)
Seems to be at least a few centuries older than the 19th, as referenced at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they . Unfortunately they don't give examples of Shakespeare's use of it. -Stephen (Steg) "i know that the spades are the swords of a soldier i know that the clubs are weapons of war i know that diamonds mean money for this art but that's not the shape of my heart" ~ 'shape of my heart'