Читать книгу The Syntax Workbook - Andrew Carnie - Страница 27

[Application of Knowledge; Advanced]

In subject position, English pronouns show up with the following forms:

a)

	singular	plural
1	I	We
2	You
3 masculine	He
3 feminine	She	They
3 neuter	It

1 stands for “first person” (the speaker), 2 stands for “second person” (the listener), 3 stands for “third person” (someone else). Masculine, feminine, and neuter are genders. We abbreviate these as m, f, n respectively. Singular and plural are numbers, which are abbreviated s and p.

PART 1: Assume that person is captured with the features [±participant] (which refers to those that are actually participants in the conversation) and [±speaker]. Give the features that define each of the persons. Then give the features for each of the pronouns in the table above.

PART 2: Now let’s consider the 3rd person forms. Let’s assume that [±feminine] defines the distinction between he and she. What about it? The strange thing about it is that it has an additional restriction upon it: It cannot be used to refer to people. It seems to only be ok when referring to things.

e) The book is on the couch. Could you bring it to me?

c) The girl is on the couch. *Could you bring it to me?

One hypothesis about this is that it isn’t defined with a feature like [neuter] but instead with a feature [±animate]. Give the features for he/she/it. Ask yourself if the pronoun it is even specified for the feature [±feminine] (i.e. does it have a value for this feature or is the feature simply absent).

Part 3: Now let’s think about the features for the plural usage of they. Does they have a value for [±feminine]? What about [±animate]? Why or why not?

Part 4: Consider singular uses of they, used either when you don’t know the gender of the person or when the person being referred to prefers non-binary pronouns. Does this pronoun have a value for [±feminine]? What about [±animate]? Why or why not?

Part 5: When talking about a non-binary person or other people who use they as their preferred pronoun, it’s considered to be very rude to refer to them with it. Instead using they is really the only non-rude option. Referring to the grammatical features you have described in parts 4, 5, and 6 explain why using it is inappropriate for a non-binary person and they is a better choice.