Search results for 'tag:Pronouns tag:Genders' matching tags 'Pronouns' and 'Genders'

Re: Tech Editing vs. Grammar?

Grammar Geek — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:02:49 GMT

Hi Nao, and welcome to the forum.

Is this a discussion for a class you're taking? Do you need to write an essay on this? You shoudl share your thoughts too.

I can tell you one thing: I took an editing class, and was bitterly disappointed to find out that it was 90% grammar - and not only that, prescriptivist grammar on things that are now no longer looked down on, like using "their" as a gender-neutral, third-person-singular pronoun.

That doesn't mean that a tech editor doesn't have to know grammar. Good grammar gives credibilty and shows attention to detail. Poor grammar (in a native English speaker) makes me wonder what else your education didn't cover and makes me less likely to trust your other areas of expertise and good grammar shows me you care about your work. If you don't care enough to correct bad grammar, did you care enough to correct coding errors?

Re: English language has no neutral singular third person pronoun

Huevos — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:56:24 GMT

A Cornish Pasty
"One" is the neutral singular third person pronoun

That's bogus. Read my post on page one. "One" in the context of a pronoun is impersonal, not neuter. A neuter pronoun would have an antecedent, "one" does not.

A Cornish Pasty
Some people have started using "they" if the gender is not known.

"They" and "their" in these context have been used for some 300 years although many pedantics still reject them.

Re: English language has no neutral singular third person pronoun

A Cornish Pasty — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:45:48 GMT

"One" is the neutral singular third person pronoun, but it's very formal and can sound pretentious.

The Queen is the best example of somebody who says one. "One loves one's Corgies very much".

Some people have started using "they" if the gender is not known. Some linguists accept it, others don't.

"Somebody was walking down the street. Suddenly, they stopped."

Re: plural reference of some singular pronouns/words

Avangi — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:28:39 GMT

Anonymous
If you say a situation or person is hollow, you could mean they have no real ...

Hi, I'm not sure why you group a "thing-word" in with all these "people-words." The plural post-reference for a singular term is only used to avoid the awkward gender issue. In English, things don't have genders (except ships) so the problem disappears. (Ships are always female.)

"Someone left their coat in the car," is unquestionably okay for casual or conversational use. You can't be faulted for saying "Someone left his or her coat in the car," but you might be given a strange look. In formal writing, opinions vary. Unless you know your readers' preferences, to be safe you could stick with "his or her." Personally, I'd say "his coat," unless I were strictly in the company of ladies.

You might do some searches on the site to get other opinions.

- A.

Re: live /lives?

Avangi — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:56:26 GMT

The important plural in your sentences is "those." People often misuse "their" as a singular, and "who" may be either singular or plural.

If you wanted to express the same thought in the singular, you might use the singular "whoever" in place of the plural "those." "I feel sorry for whoever lacks faith in his life."

this gets messy because of the gender issue. People (me, for instance) don't like to use "his or her," so they replace these singular pronouns with the plural "their," and say, "I feel sorry for whoever lacks faith in their life." This is a real mess. Note that "whoever lacks" has a singular subject and a singular verb.

If a man were leading two lives, the possessive pronoun (his) would still have to be singular: "I feel sorry for the man who lacks faith in his lives," just like, "I feel sorry for the man who lacks strength in his legs." "Legs" is plural, but "his" must be singular because "man" is singular.

Best wishes, - A.

Edit. About the ambiguity, my question is, where exactly is the faith lacking? Do YOU lack faith, or does you LIFE lack faith? For example, you'd say that YOU lack courage, or your LIFE lacks excitement. But "faith" can work either way. "I don't have enough faith in the way my life will turn out." "My life doesn't seem to have enough faith in it." (faith, as an ingredient in my life)

Make any sense??

Re: expectations, expectation

Skrej — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:38:20 GMT

Mr. Wordy
This doesn't seem quite right. The subject of this instance of "is" is "Lewis Hamilton", not "expectation".

First, I should apologize, as Mr. Wordy is exactly right. Not sure how/why I made a boneheaded mistake confusing the subjects. Mea culpa. Thank you for correcting that glaring error, Mr. Wordy.

Optilang makes a good point as to reasons for choosing singular over plural. Without knowing the exact situation, both do work, as others have stated.

However, in my mind, I'm leaning towards the plural as more preferable (but not more correct) because I'm biased by the the phrase "causing him immense problems."

If the problems are "immense (and multiple ones at that)", I would sort of expect him to be hammered by multiple expectations, not just a single one. I suppose if the single expectation was very strong, it could lead to a lot of severe problems, but I still favor the plural.

New2Grammar

Avangi, I've been paying attention to why he is sometimes used without knowing the gender. Is this common? Or Do you know Anon?

By the way, I agree with your interpretation of what the questioner wanted. However, I don't see why the plural is more effective. Any explanation you can offer? Thanks in advance

See my thoughts above on the plural issue. As for the question of 'he' when the gender is unknown, it is indeed very common. In English, if the gender isn't specifically known, it's generally assumed to be male.

There is of course a lot of talk about this being sexist language, and some movements towards using non-gender specific pronouns, but there's of course debate over political correctness vs. tradition, blah blah blah. You may see things like 'he/she', 'they', or even the odd 's/he' being used in an attempt to avert sexist language, but it's still the norm to just use 'he' unless it's known that the subject is feminine, at least for the time being.

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:26 GMT

Hi everyone

I just wondered if anyone could help - I have to write a profile of a chinese learner of English (completely made up). In it I must put any difficulties that the learner has in learning English as an L2. I have got so far:

Intonation transfer from L1 may cause them to be perceived as rude/inconsiderate, more serious transfer may affect comprehensiveness.
No inflections in L1 - tenses difficult to learn in L2 as L1 has no true tenses and concept of time is expressed by adverbs/implicit or contextual assumptions.
Difficulty distinguishing [r] & - Does anyone know why this is as I can't find a reason?!!
Prepositions such as 'on', 'in' & 'at' have one chinese translation in many contexts, 'zai' - may be confused resulting in phrases such as 'on Taiwan' instead of 'in Taiwan'.
Use of awkward gerunds e.g. 'no noising', excessive use of verbs ending in 'ing' e.g. 'do not climbing', confusion of 'ed' & 'ing' verbs e.g. 'i am bored' vs 'i am boring' --- all of these errors occur because verbs are not conjugated in chinese, for tense or pronoun.
No equivalent word for 'the' so may be used excessively when not needed e.g. 'The China' or missed out when needed. May also be confused with 'a'/'an'.
Confusion over countable and uncountable nouns, use of 'how much?' vs 'how many?' - leads to phrases such as 'I want a soup' & 'a lot of shoe'. This is due to there not being plurals in chinese - no inflections.

Switching between 'he' & 'she' - Does anyone know why this is?

If anyone can think of anymore it would be greatly appreciated or if anyone knows the answers to my questions about gender switching and distinguishing [r] & this would also help a lot!!

Thank you in advance.

Shannon

Re: Please Check

Grammar Geek — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:31:59 GMT

Hello Verymaddhatter, and welcome to English Forums.

1. A pronoun's antecedent is the:

A. pronoun itself. B. gender of the pronoun. C word that the pronoun refers back to. D. none of the above

Answer is B. Sorry - it's C.

2. A pronoun must agree with its antecedent in:

A. number. B. gender. C. usage. D. both A & B

Answer is D. Yes

3. The indefinite pronoun everyone actually refers to:

A. lots of people. B. only one individual. C. both a & b D. neither a nor b

Answer is C I'm not sure what the question is asking. I agree with your answer, but I'm not sure if your textbooks will Try to write a couple sentences using "Everyone" both ways.

4. Which of the following shows correct pronoun/antecedent agreement?

A. Everybody will need their books for class. B Everybody will need his or her books for class. C. neither a nor b D. both a & b

Answer is D. In real life, we use "their" for the singular, genderless pronoun all the time. It's possible your book is lookingly for B.

5. Which of the following shows correct pronoun/ antecedent agreement?

A. Each of the women carried their purse. B. Each of the women carried her purse. C. neither a nor b D. both a & b

Answer is B. I agree

Please Check

Verymaddhatter — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:22:57 GMT

1. A pronoun's antecedent is the:

A. pronoun itself. B. gender of the pronoun. C word that the pronoun refers back to. D. none of the above

Answer is B.

2. A pronoun must agree with its antecedent in:

A. number. B. gender. C. usage. D. both A & B

Answer is D.

3. The indefinite pronoun everyone actually refers to:

A. lots of people. B. only one individual. C. both a & b D. neither a nor b

Answer is C

4. Which of the following shows correct pronoun/antecedent agreement?

A. Everybody will need their books for class. B Everybody will need his or her books for class. C. neither a nor b D. both a & b

Answer is D.

5. Which of the following shows correct pronoun/ antecedent agreement?

A. Each of the women carried their purse. B. Each of the women carried her purse. C. neither a nor b D. both a & b

Answer is B.

Re: Possessive adjectives and pronouns, object pronouns for words such as "person, one, who"

khoff — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:06:35 GMT

English really needs another pronoun for cases like this!

Traditionally, if the gender was unknown, the masculine pronoun would be used. In a grammar book from 50 years ago, your examples would most certainly use "his." Today this would still be considered grammatically correct, but might be considered socially incorrect. These days, at least in the U.S., the "best" solution is probably to say "his or her", like this:

The one who had lost his or her identification card, couldn't come in. (This example bothers me a bit, probably because I think it's unlikely that the speaker would know that someone had lost a card and was not allowed to come in but would not know if it was a man or a woman.)

- Each person should take his or her equipment to the bus.

- We don't know the person, but we shall wait for him or her, wearing white shirts and holding daisies in our hands.

In some cases, rewriting the sentence into the plural would be a good choice:

"Passengers should take their equipment to the bus."

"Those who lose their identification cards will not be allowed in." Obviously, this is not always possible if the subject is definitely singular.

We would never use "it" for a person.

However, since our language has no pronoun for "a single person of unknown gender," people have begun to use "they, their, them" in situations like this. (Each person should take their equipment to the bus.) Technically it's not correct to use "they" for a single person, but its gender-neutral property is so useful that it is being used this way more and more. It's much easier than saying "his or her." I can't speak for everyone, but it doesn't offend me, and I would be very likely to say it myself in conversation. It would probably be best to avoid it in very formal writing or on English exams.

(In thinking about this, I'm not sure why the evolution of the language has favored using the plural pronoun as a gender-neutral singular rather than using the gender-neutral but inanimate "it" for people -- but that's definitely what has happened. It would be very common to hear any of your examples with the appropiate form of "their," but never, never with "its.")