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Wei_Dai comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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I disagree that it's a more elegant solution. Suppose I say "While on vacation with a bunch of friends, Chris lost their money." I bet almost everyone would interpret "their" to mean "Chris and friends'" instead of "Chris's". Even when the meaning can be correctly deduced from context, using "they" in place of "he or she" as a singular referring pronoun would probably cause a significant delay in reading as the reader tries to figure out what "they" might be referring to, and whether it's an unintentional error.
In communities of people who prefer not to use either "he" or "she" to refer to themselves, they can set whatever community-specific rules they want. I have no objection to using "they" in that context, but it doesn't seem like a good general solution for the problem of unknown genders.
Natural languages are full of ambiguity, and yes that use sounds wrong cause your talking about a particular person.
And if you really wanted to say that it was Chris's money, how about "Chris lost Chris's money." It sounds awkward to me cause my English only allows use of they in the singular if it is an abstract person, not a particular real person.
I mean its not like "Chris lost his money" is unambiguous, it is not at all clear to me weather the he refers to Chris, or someone else. That would probably be clear in discourse because of context.
Do you agree that using 'they' as a singular referring pronoun is not yet a part of natural English (i.e., a majority of English speakers do not naturally use it that way, nor expect it to be used that way), but that usage is being proposed by some as a useful reform, while others oppose it?
My point is that making this change involves a large cost, including a period of confusion as some people start using 'they' as a singular referring pronoun while others are not expecting it to be used that way. And we can foresee that it will increase the amount of ambiguity in English even after this period of confusion is over. Is 'he or she' really so bad that this costly reform is worthwhile?
As wedrifid suggests, I think you overestimate the cost. Heck, English allows the verbing of nouns - screwing around with grammatical number is chump change.
Most of the people I talk to accept 'they' as natural English. My highschool English teachers would probably be an exception, as was I until I decided to let it go. Wnoise probably has a point that 'singular they' is a matter of dialect, with most, perhaps unfortunately, having lost some of the more elegant subtleties.
A good question. I'm happy to leave it with 'singular they' for most people but 'he or she' for people who want to signal sophistication (by speaking correctly). It is probably too late to hope to gain much relief from ambiguity except when you are familiar with your audience's manner of speech.
EDIT: I missed the great, great grandparent about singular bound vs singular referring. Thanks Wei.
I do not agree that there is a singular "natural English", but rather many overlapping dialects and gradients. In many of them, some usages of "singular they" are completely accepted, in others, next to no usage is.
In proper English, that would not be ambiguous; pronouns always refer to their antecedents, and no other applicable noun can come between the pronoun and the antecedent.
This causes a problem with "they" in this case; "Chris and Pat went to their car" becomes unambiguously "Chris and Pat went to Pat's car" if "they" can refer to "Pat", leaving us with no pronoun for "Chris and Pat".
It sounds like all these (counterfactual?) people who speak "proper English" need to adapt their language.
nolrai explicitly specified "natural language," not your "proper English."
That particular case could be reworded with "Chris lost some money". On the other hand, that doesn't convey that Chris had no money left, so I don't know.
It is always possible to create ambiguity if ambiguity is what you seek - "they" is no richer a source of such than any other. I don't think either of us is going to convince the other to change their mode of speech (no flaunting of my particular preference intended).
Edit: How did you find out that Chris lost their money without finding out Chris's gender, anyway? I don't advocate singular-they in cases where you know the gender.
You're not flaunting your preference (at least not to me), since the "their" in that sentence is a singular bound pronoun, not a singular referring pronoun.
Perhaps Chris wrote a blog post about it?
Ok, I didn't think that you did.
"Chris said on their blog that they lost their money while vacationing with friends."