4 ms·
Yeah, but there’s no good solution there. If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous.
by cgrealy 5y ago
Yeah, but there’s no good solution there. If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous.
- notahacker 5y ago> If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous. My point exactly. There's nothing inherently unique about singular "they" in that respect. Sure, there are certain circumstances in which a gendered pronoun removes ambiguity, just as honorifics or age/social status based pronouns would remove ambiguity in many instances involving multiple male subjects/objects if English used them (like some other languages do), but that really isn't a reason not to use singular "they" with the same degree of care to avoid ambiguity one also has to use "he" and "she".