[ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes

[Richard Loosemore]

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Richard Loosemore wrote:
>> Alas, History would have issues with you there:  IIRC, she would tell 
>> you that about three centuries ago, the normal, correct form of a 
>> singular, gender-neutral pronoun was "they".  This was then deliberately 
>> (?) changed by men who decided to go with the male gender for neutral 
>> references, as a more fitting reflection of their status in society.
> 
> I'd be interested in a source for this, if anyone knows it.
> 

I was not sure of when the deliberate alteration occured, but apparently 
one of the officially documented attempts was a relatively recent (1850) 
Act of Parliament.  Carolyn Space Jacobson, at UPenn, writes:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He" started to be used as a generic pronoun by grammarians who were 
trying to change a long-established tradition of using "they" as a 
singular pronoun. In 1850 an Act of Parliament gave official sanction to 
the recently invented concept of the "generic" he. In the language used 
in acts of Parliament, the new law said, "words importing the masculine 
gender shall be deemed and taken to include females."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[From:  http://www.english.upenn.edu/%7Ecjacobso/gender.html]

I understand that a series of grammar books written by Ann Fischer from 
1745 onwards were actually responsible for 'forcing' the modern usage 
after a period when it had always been accepted that 'they' was 
acceptable.  The popularity of her grammar books was a significant 
factor in the shift from 'they' to 'he'.

Reference:  Ian Michael, The teaching of English, from the sixteenth
century to 1870, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1987.

Cited in:  http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2006-July/039333.html


An apparently authoritative general source is Dennis E. Baron, Grammar 
and Gender, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986.




Richard Loosemore