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

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'