gender - was Re: Three Kinds of Logical Trees
From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:11:07 GMT
Message-ID: <%0vFe.45113$5V4.22290_at_pd7tw3no>
>
>
> [Let me just state for the record that my singular indefinite "he"
> is not gender specific. Rather it is a consequence of the lack of
> a gender inspecific pronoun in the English language,
> ...
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:11:07 GMT
Message-ID: <%0vFe.45113$5V4.22290_at_pd7tw3no>
Marshall Spight wrote:
> ...
>>>database, etc. And to manage this process effectively, he needs >>>a strong suite of tools, >> >>Yes, she does.
>
>
> [Let me just state for the record that my singular indefinite "he"
> is not gender specific. Rather it is a consequence of the lack of
> a gender inspecific pronoun in the English language,
> ...
notwithstanding its idiosyncratic grammar, part of the economy of written English is due to the fact that 'he' was regarded for centuries as standing for anybody, ie. it was understood, at least in print, to be gender non-specific. literal revisionists have created just as many problems based on imaginary slurs that don't really need to be solved in the social sciences as they have in the computer sciences. i'm surprised that they haven't tried to replace the royal 'we' that so many writers still use.
p
-- Apologies for my broken keyboard. I'm using the keyboard combination 'kw' to substitute for the broken key that stands for the letter that falls between 'p' and 'r' in this alphabet.Received on Tue Jul 26 2005 - 20:11:07 CEST