Indefinite singular pronouns are not treated as plural:
No one is coming.
Everybody is coming.
One is coming.
Nothing is happening.
Everything is happening.
Whichever is easier.
And so on.
Say you don't know who you are talking to on Reddit, you simply know -their- username.
That is not indefinite because you're still referring to a specific person, while the indefinite pronouns (one, everybody etc. as above along with a few others) are used to not refer to a specific person or thing. That you don't know much about the specific person, does not remove the specificity.
Indeed even if you start out with an indefinite, you then move to a definite one:
Something happened and it changed him.
The something is indefinite because we don't know what it is, but after we've introduced it we use the definite it because while we're still not aware of what it is, we at least have the identity of "whatever it is we're talking about" to refer to definitively.
What you are referring to above is that the pronoun is neutral because we don't know if they are male or female (or indeed a piece of software that posts random stuff to reddit, or a person who does not identify as either male or female).
In English there are three long-standing singular third person pronouns; it/it/its/itself *, he/him/his/himself and they/them/their/themselves,† along with several novel pronouns like ze/ze/zir/zirself and thon/thon/thons/thonself.
Of these:
The novel pronouns are rarely used.
It is generally not used for people, but only as an impersonal pronoun.
He is also used in a specifically-male context. This has led to it declining in such use steadily over the centuries with the process accelerating considerably during the last so that this use is now seen by many as very old-fashioned at best, downright sexist at worse.
All of them are used in singular form except for they.
While they has been used as a singular pronoun for the entire history of Modern English, the Middle English they or thei had once been used only as a plural pronoun, being turned to singular use as well during that period.
When it was turned to such use, it retained its earlier grammatical number so while its referent might be a single person, it's grammatical number was still plural. So to take an early Modern example:
Enter Nurse [within] and knock.
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself.
ROMEO
Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans,
Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.
Knock.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Hark, how they knock!—Who's there?—Romeo, arise;
Here we can see the indefinite third person singular used singular in "one knocks" and the definite third person singular used plural in "they knock".
This legacy of they's origin as a plural-only pronoun remained in most people's use, and so remains to this day.
This is no doubt one of the reasons why in the 18th and 19th century some people began to argue against it.
Another being that such people seemed to often not like uneven overlaps; a lot of "rules" invented at the time started with uneven overlaps and restricted use so that less would never be used if fewer could, learn never used where teach could, and so on.
At the time though, he as a gender-neutral personal pronoun was much more common, so they had an easier alternative in suggesting that people should just use he.
(And in fairness to those writers, most of them didn't say singular they was wrong, they just recommended he over it).
So in summary:
That's not what indefinite means, indefinite refers to pronouns like everyone that does not specify.
Most singular third person pronouns are treated as singular.
They is treated as plural as a legacy of a time before around half-way through the Middle English period, when it was only used in a plural context.
*Early in Modern English his was used as the genitive of it. Around the time that Tyndale was writing his translation of the Bible one issue he faced was whether to use his which some thought wasn't as good a match with it or to use its which some thought was too innovative for formal use.
†Both themself and themselves are found. Themself is the older but while it never died out entirely themselves is now much more common. Some people prefer to use themself in singular contexts and themselves in plural contexts, but this practice is far from universal and using themselves for both is more common along with a few people still using themself for both.
No comments:
Post a Comment