COGNATE 1
linguist Dennis Baron (he/him/his) JUST RELEASED BOOK
"What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She
started to be used as a generic pronoun by _________ who were trying to change a long-established tradition of using ______________.
'He' , grammarians , 'they' as a singular pronoun
"At issue is how to translate pronouns that apply to both genders in the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts but have traditionally been translated using masculine forms in English. . . .
.....
Example Anyone who wants to go to the game should bring his money tomorrow. [Anyone who wants to go to the game should bring their money tomorrow. ]
.....
"While the translators' former grammar teachers may not like it, the translators offer a strong justification for their choice of 'they' (instead of the clunky 'he or she') and 'them' (instead of 'him or her') to refer back to the singular 'whoever.' "They commissioned an extensive study of the way modern English writers and speakers convey gender inclusiveness. According to the translators' notes on the Committee on Bible Translation's website, 'The gender-neutral pronoun "they" ("them"/"their") is by far the most common way that English-language speakers and writers today refer back to singular antecedents such as "whoever," "anyone," "somebody," "a person," "no one," and the like.'" (Associated Press, "New Bible Draws Critics of Gender-Neutral Language." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 18, 2011)
.......
mankind [humanity, people, human beings] man's achievements [human achievements] man-made [synthetic, manufactured, machine- made] the common man [the average person, ordinary people]
.......
"An example from the translator's notes for Mark 4:25 . . . show how the NIV's translation of these words has evolved over the past quarter-century. "The widely distributed 1984 version of the NIV quotes Jesus: 'Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.' "The more recent incarnation of the NIV from 2005, called Today's New International Version, changed that to: 'Those who have will be given more; as for those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.'
/..////
"There is an interesting historical twist to this story. Around ___________, at the time of so-called ______, the masculine pronoun was hē and the feminine pronoun was hēo.
1000 years ago , Old English
"The debate has been reenergized in the last _______ years because of awareness of
15-20, nonbinary gender issues and transgender and gender-nonconforming people
The earliest example he found, from _____, is "__," with "_____" for the object and "____" for the possessive. Others include "_____" or "_____," the latter of which was used by __________________ for ___years, Baron said.
1841, e , em , es , zie , hir , The Sacramento Bee newspaper , 25
In _______ an _________ gave official sanction to the recently invented concept of the generic 'he.' . . . [T]he new law said, 'words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females.'" (R. Barker and C. Moorcroft, Grammar First. Nelson Thornes, 2003)
1850 , Act of Parliament
Baron's interest in pronouns began when he was researching language reform in the early_______.
1980s
The courts and government debated whether the use of the generic "he" in law excluded women.
19th century
His list now contains more than
200 coined pronouns.
Merriam-Webster chose "they" as its ________________ based on the number of dictionary lookups, and the singular "they" was added to its online dictionary in _______.
2019 Word of the Year , September
Dominating the pronoun stakes by a large margin is 'singular' they which was used __________________). This was followed by 72 cases in which the generic noun was repeated (17%). There were still 50 cases of the use of masculine generic he (12%). The dual pronoun strategy, i.e. use of he or she only occurred 8 times (1.5%) and the generic use of she only 3 times (0.5%)." (Anne Pauwels, "Inclusive Language Is Good Business: Gender, Language and Equality in the Workplace." Gendered Speech in Social Context, ed. by Janet Holmes. Victoria University. Press, 2000)
281 times (67%)
He came across a number of coined pronouns from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and he published an article about them in a linguistics journal. More recently, he started looking at ______________________. His list now contains more than 200 coined pronouns.
Dennis Baron
a University of Illinois professor emeritus of English
Dennis Baron (he/him/his)
writes about the history of pronoun use and the role pronouns have played in establishing our rights and identities.
Dennis Baron (he/him/his)
He came across a number of coined pronouns from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and he published an article about them in a linguistics journal. More recently, he started looking at ______________________.
Dennis Baron, digitized 19th-century newspapers online
are almost as likely to include the preferred gender pronouns of the ______ as they are their names and titles.
Email signatures, SENDERS
is language that attempts to refer neither to males nor females when discussing an abstract or hypothetical person whose sex cannot otherwise be determined.
Gender-neutral language (gender-generic, gender- inclusive, non-sexist, or sex-neutral language)
"The 2011 translation of the _____________________, or NIV, does not change pronouns referring to God, who remains 'He' and 'the Father.' But it does aim to avoid using 'he' or 'him' as the default reference to an unspecified person. . . .
New International Version Bible
becoming like an honorific, like a title. This is how you refer to me," Baron said.
PRONOUN
Authors including ________ often have used the singular "they."
Shakespeare
argued from the 1870s to the early 1900s that if 'he' is treated as generic in ________, then the voter ___----as well.
Suffragists , criminal law ,, women
2019 WORD OF THE YEAR
THEY in merriam webster dictionary
is a fossil that preserves the 'h' of the original feminine pronoun hēo.
The initial 'h' of her and hers
____, particularly in the 19th century, involved legal as well as literary implications, Baron said.
The pronoun debate
When the ______________ posted a guide to gender-neutral pronouns on its website, it enraged conservative politicians in the state, Baron said. But more language authorities, such as dictionaries and style guides, now are accepting the singular "they," including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, he said.
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
"_______, if they want to conceal somebody's gender or if gender is irrelevant, need to have a word, and the only word we have is '______,'" Baron said.
Writers,,, they
Language is like an _______ in providing
X-ray, visible evidence of invisible thoughts.
"The CBMW _____ had complained in 2005 that making the subject of a verse plural to convey that it could refer equally to a man or a woman _______________________"The NIV 2011 seems to have taken that criticism into account and come up with a compromise: 'Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.'
[Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood] , 'potentially obscured an important aspect of biblical thought--that of the personal relationship between an individual and God.'
This is good because as a problem that begins in people's assumptions and expectations it's a problem that will be solved only when
a great many people have given it a great deal of thought
Like gender in society, gender in the English language represents ______________, ________________, reflecting the _____________ about sex and gender.
a set of constructed categories , categories whose boundaries will change over time ,, evolution of ideas
generic pronoun is Also called a
common-gender pronoun, an epicene pronoun, and a gender-neutral pronoun.
Nilsen * The best thing about people being interested in and discussing sexist language is that as they make _______________ about what pronouns they will use, what jokes they will tell or laugh at, how they will write their names, or how they will begin their letters.
conscious decisions
Now, there were some _______________ in the UK that (in their spoken versions at least) never felt the effects of she and indeed ended up with only one pronoun form (the collapse of original hē and hēo). Sometimes written as ou (or a), it was probably pronounced something like [uh] (in other words, the schwa . . .). These dialects didn't have the problem of coming up with clumsy alternatives like s/he when the sex of a person was unknown or irrelevant. The form ou was truly a ______________." (Kate Burridge, Gift of the Gob: Morsels of English Language History.
conservative dialects , gender-neutral pronoun
The declaration of preferred pronouns is a _________________ , but people have been searching for _____________________ since at least the late _____ century.
contemporary cultural issue, gender-neutral pronouns, 18th
The gendered references depend on the ___________________ as well as the _______________, all of which are affected and in many ways determined by ________________ of sex and gender.
context and register of discourse , attitudes of speakers , social concepts
"There are examples where writers use the singular 'they' to .......
create suspense or to create comedy
The way in which English language users make distinctions between male and female and between masculine and feminine in their ______ will be reflected in the distinctions they make between masculine and feminine in their ________, as long as the gender system is a _________ one.
culture, language, semantic
"It was a _______. Somebody coined pronouns because __________________________," he said. "A few of the words made it into ______. None of them ever achieved __________________.
curiosity , they felt a word was missing from English, dictionaries, widespread use
The courts at the time ________, although they continued to uphold "he" as including women when it came to
disagreed , obligations such as paying taxes or incurring civil or criminal penalties.
"It's got this ___________________________________ once again in the context of new gender issues.
extra-special significance
"At some point, ______________will be not so big a deal. People are becoming increasingly accepting of it, and possibly the pronoun issue will fade into the background because ___________________
gender nonconformity , people won't feel the need to politicize the pronoun.
Gender-neutral language in English includes but is not limited to the use of
gender-neutral pronouns.
English does not have a system of grammatical gender for nouns in general, it instead uses ______________.
gender-specific pronouns
is a personal pronoun (such as one or they) that can refer to both masculine and feminine entities.
generic pronoun
THE PRONOUN IS becoming like an ________ This is how you refer to me," Baron said.
honorific, like a title.
If you examine carefully how we usually express ourselves you will see
how male-centred our language is.
old english masculine pronoun
hē
feminine pronoun during old english
hēo
Using the masculine pronouns to refer to an _______________also has the effect of excluding women.
indefinite pronoun (everybody, everyone, anybody, anyone)
What these incidents show is that sexism is not something existing ________________ that | happened to read.
independently in the particular dictionary
The singular "they" is used all the time in speech, he said. "It's such an ________________, people don't even notice it.
ingrained part of the language
masculine pronoun has long been used as a generic pronoun, it excludes women and many people don't like it because
it doesn't agree with its antecedent noun in gender
Baron's interest in pronouns began when he was researching __________________ in the early 1980s.
language reform
There's a place in 'The Pickwick Papers' where Dickens uses it to conceal gender for a page or so. Agatha Christie puts it in Hercule Poirot's mouth: 'I'm using the generic male, but the killer could be a woman.' You see it all over the place as a ________."
literary device
The English language has developed in a
male- dominated, male-centred society
has long been used as a generic pronoun, it excludes women and many people don't like it because it doesn't agree with its antecedent noun in gender, Baron said.
masculine pronoun
It's not just women's rights; ____We see a revived interest in both coined pronouns and the singular 'they.'"
now it's trans rights and nonbinary rights.
It's not just women's rights; ____We see a revived interest in both ________ and the ______"
now it's trans rights and nonbinary rights. ,,, coined pronouns,,,,,singular 'they.'
The Chinese expressions for "Queen," , and "Empress," , simply use the characters for "King," , and "Emperor, , and add the character for "woman/female," .
nu
Sexism exists in
people's minds.
In all but strictly formal uses, __________ have become acceptable substitutes for the masculine singular.
plural pronouns
"The first results of a large scale project investigating the adoption of feminist language change in spoken language (with a focus on public speech) suggests that 'singular' they is the ______________________________ in public speech: ____ radio interviews (approx. 196000 words and involving 14 interviewers and 199 guests) yielded ______________________________.
preferred generic pronoun, 45, 422 cases of pronominalisation of generic nouns
The topic of _____________ continues to trigger _____________.
preferred pronouns, controversy
The book has a mainly historical focus and puts the present interest in
pronouns in historical perspective
discrimination on the basis of gender; can be used to discriminate against men or women
sexism
The form ____ didn't make an appearance until sometime during the _________. It eventually came to replace hēo, and this is why we have this little irregularity now in the modern language — she versus her/hers.
she , 12th century ,
Some people object to using "they" as a _______, but Baron points out that "____" at one time was strictly a _____________. It wasn't accepted as singular until the ______________.
singular pronoun, you, plural pronoun, 17th century
Although MAN in its original sense carried the dual meaning of adult human and adult male, its meaning has come to be _____________ that the generic use of MAN and other words with masculine markers should be avoided.
so closely identified as adult male
Much of the current work on Modern English gender maintains that pronoun selection depends on _________ and _________ as well as __________________; the facts presented suggest that all of these factors in turn rest on the same foundation: the concepts of sex and gender held by language users and the society in which they express themselves.
speaker attitudes, involvement, cultural proto-types
Much of the current work on Modern English gender maintains that pronoun selection depends on speaker attitudes and involvement as well as cultural proto-types; the facts presented suggest that all of these factors in turn rest on the same foundation:
the concepts of sex and gender held by language users and the society in which they express themselves.
The language we use reflects and reinforces
the values of the society in which we live.
God may have created man before woman, but
there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.
"One word that seems to be filling the gap is the singular '_____,'" he said.
they
is used in singular constructions (a practice that dates to the 16th century), though __________ fault this practice. The most common way of avoiding the problem is
they-pronoun group ,, strict prescriptive grammarians ,,, to use the plural forms of nouns in company with the generic pronouns they, them, and their.
"It's OK to have...............We don't have to have a _________," Baron said.
variable pronoun usage , single paradigm
"Language is __________________, and we _____ our language to _____________________."
variable, tailor , context and situation
In recent years, because English does not have a singular equivalent for they and because the use of he as a generic pronoun appears to exclude or marginalize women,
various composites and neologisms have been proposed, including s/he, han, and he/she.
