Re: OT: language (was: Re: something about rm)
On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 17 May 2012 20:52:36 Kelly Clowers wrote:
>> Unlike those (and similar invented things), "they" doesn't sound
>> horrible and ridiculously artificial.
>
> To many of us, it does. It grates badly. I have no problem at all with
> (s)he, I also contend that "it's she" is perfectly acceptable and can be
> validly parsed grammatically.
>
> The "it's" is in common usage, for example as in "it's a lovely day". "It's
> raining", or e.g. when announcing a birth "it's a girl".
"It's raining" is inherently neuter. "it" refers to the weather, or the sky,
or general conditions. As far as things like "it's a girl", well, there are
certain phrases that have become common that use "it" that way.
Using "it" that way outside those phrases sounds bizarre, e.g.
"I suspect that file recovery is its current priority."
If I heard that it would be very jarring and I would tend to think
that "it" would be an AI or asexual alien (if we had contact with such
things, or it was a sci-fi story), or "it" was an inanimate thing being
anthropomorphized. Or possibly a weird, gender-based insult.
"Their" in that sentence, on other hand, flows pretty well.
I have no data for this, but I would be willing to bet that singular
they is in more widespread use in American English than any of
the invented words. Probably also more common than "it" for
unknown-but-present gender.
Cheers,
Kelly Clowers
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