104 Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrasesantecedents.) Examples of semantically singular they are given in [52]:[52] Nobodv in their right mind would do a thing like that.
11 Everyone has told me too. think I made the right decision.
III We need a manager who is reasonably flexible in their approach.
IV In that case the husband or the wife will have to give up their seat on the
board.Notice that this special interpretation of they doesn't affect verb agreement: we have
they think (3rd plural) in [i i], not *they thinks (3rd singular). Nonetheless, th ey can
be INTERPRETED as if it were 3rd person singular, with human denotation and
unspecified gender.
The pronoun he used to be recommended for these uses. That would give us
%Nobody in his right mind would do a thing like that instead of [52i]. However, this
now seems inappropriate to a large proportion of speakers, who systematically
avoid the use of he in such contexts (hence the per cent sign on the example just
given).
This avoidance of he can't be dismissed as just a matter of political correctness.
The real problem with using he is that its primary sense unquestionably colours the
interpretation, sometimes inappropriately. If his were used in place of their in
[52iii], it would suggest that the speaker assumes the manager will be a man. And
he is im possible for just about all speakers in cases like [52iv], where the antecedent
is a coordination of a masculine and a feminine NP joined by or: you could hardly
say ?In that case the husband or the wife will have to give up his seat on the board.
This shows that he doesn't have a genuinely sex-neutral sense.
Some speakers use disjunctive locutions like he or she in preference to the sexist
use of he: We need a manager who is reasonably flexible in his or her approach. But
this sounds absurd when there are repeated occurrences: examples like ?Everyone
agreed he or she would bring his or her lunch with him or her are far too cumber
some for use. And *Everyone's here, isn 't he or she? is flatly ungrammatical,
because the interrogative component in this construction is required to contain just
an auxiliary and a pronoun. The only natural non-sexist alternative would be: Every
one's here, aren't they?
Among younger speakers today, semantically singular they is extending its
scope: people use it even with definite NP antecedents, sidestepping any presump
tions about the sex of the person referred to, as in Yo u should ask your partner what
they think, or The person I was with said they hated the film.
There is just one problem area for they with singular antecedents: what to use
in the reflexive construction (the one containing compound forms like myself,
ourselves, etc.). Everybody enjoyed themselves seems fine, because we're talking
about a number of people; but ?Somebody here obviously considers themselves
above the law, with the visibly plural selves, sounds odd given that there's just one
person involved and the verb is a 3rd person singular form. The obvious solution
would be to have a singular form themself. This is found, and has a long history
in English, but at the moment it is quite rare, and can't really be regarded as
standard.