Reader KB sends in two interesting passages from E. Nesbit, The Story of the Amulet, 1906, where it is used when one might have expected singular they (emphasis added): Chapter 1 (in an Edwardian present) "I hope you notice that they were not cowardly enough to cry till their Father had gone; they knew he […]
Another example of extreme singular their, this one from Google+:
I don't think we've had one of these before. In many earlier posts (e.g. "Candidates must be a student", 4/16/2009; "Xtreme singular they", 4/18/2008; "'Singular they', God said it, I believe it, that settles it", 9/13/2006; "They are a prophet", 10/21/2004), we've noted that they/them/their is often used with non-specific singular human antecedents, not only […]
In the comments on yesterday's post, Ran Ari-Gur raised the possibility that sentence-initial conjunctions are verbally and plenarily inspired of God, just as singular they is. Ran's evidence came from a sample consisting of the first 80 verses of Genesis in the original Hebrew and in the King James translation. I decided to check more […]
I recently learned about a praiseworthy initiative, the Google Lime Scholarship for Students with Disabilities, whose eligibility requirements are expressed (in part) as follows: Candidates must be: A student entering their junior or senior year of undergraduate study […] […] A person with a disability (defined as someone who has, or considers themselves to have, […]
From yesterday's editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the conviction of a local political boss, Vince Fumo, on 137 corruption-related charges: There was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Fumo. That would be the city that spawned him, took what he delivered and then pretended to be shocked, shocked at the unsavory details of […]
This morning, from the airport in Brussels, I want to following up on our discussion of discourse anaphora ("Why are some summatives labeled 'vague'?", 5/21/2008; "More theory trumping practice", 5/22/2008; "Poor pitiful which", 5/23/2008; "Clarity, choice, and evidence", 5/23/2008), in the spirit of Friday's post about "Prescriptivist science".
Is there any "prescriptivist science"? Could there be any? The reaction of some linguists will be that "prescriptivist science" is as much as a contradiction in terms as "creation science" is. But I disagree.
It's often impossible to tell the difference between reduced him and reduced them. In particular, I can't tell whether John Edwards said "I just voted for him on Tuesday, so…" — meaning Barack Obama — or "I just voted for them on Tuesday, so…" — i.e. sex-neutral them, meaning either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, […]
Trump's Wednesday evening speech got a lot of media coverage, as expected — but along with descriptions of (and responses to) the content, there were also many references to the tone, and specifically to the pace.
"Against We", by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution (11/28/25) Quoting the author: The excellent Hollis Robbins: I propose a moratorium on the generalized first-person plural for all blog posts, social media comments, opinion writing, headline writers, for all of December. No “we, “us,” or “our,” unless the “we” is made explicit.
"‘We’re a bit jealous of Kneecap’: how Europe’s minority tongues are facing the digital future", Stephen Burgen, The Guardian (11/26/25) What does it mean to lose a language? And what does it take to save it? Those were the big questions being asked in Barcelona recently The author tells us: There’s an Irish saying, tír […]
This is something I've been waiting for for decades: "Onomatopoeia Odyssey: How do animals sound across languages?", by Vivian Li, The Pudding (March, 2025) For many, our first memories of learning animal sounds include the song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” The song has been translated into at least 25 languages, and a curious finding […]