First and second mentioned pronouns

[jack]

Merging "He" and "She" makes lots of sentences more ambiguous. A common idea is to instead of having 'male' and 'female' have 'first and second'. "He insulted him and he hit him" is a bit ambiguous. "He1 insulted him2 and he2 hit him1" isn't. Doesn't one of the cool artificial languages do that?

But it occurred to me -- that's exactly how geeks use "foo" and "bar". What other innovations do we have already that we didn't notice? :)

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've always considered "they" to be a perfectly good GNP. The usage is only six hundred or so years old though so I suppose it's a bit soon to expect it to be widely accepted...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

To me it still sounds odd when used to represent a specific person rather than an indefinate of some sort.

"Everyone loves their mother" sounds fine.
"Who's that person? I can't even see if they're a man or a woman." still ok.
"Leslie doesn't like people to know if they're male or female" sounds odd to me.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Surely that oddness would apply to any GNP though, not just 'they'?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Actually, somehow a new word isn't as annoying to me as an old word used 'wrongly'.

*Would* you use it like that?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

rysmiel really doesn't want you to know what biological gender they are.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Don't they? Hmmm, maybe it does sound ok. Did my example sound at all odd to you?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The Leslie example sounds funny because the 'they' wants to bind to 'people' rather than 'Leslie', which makes it sounds like Leslie has a really bizarre social policy they're planning to impose when they become dictator. Apart from that... not really l-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

"Leslie wants to keep it secret if they're male or female." Better. OK, I expect I'll give up on this one sooner or later.