Pronoun Agreement Out the Window?

December 16, 2011, 12:01 am

I exchanged a few e-mails about grammar with a woman I have never met, who I will call Mary, since that is not her name. In one of my messages I happened to make this passing reference to someone:

[1]	She would never be acerbic to anybody until they stepped over the line and really deserved it.

To my amazement, Mary’s reply quoted this back and added a comment:

I avoid having pronouns not agreeing with antecedents. I guess this rule is out the window in Scotland too. No way shall I ever be convinced to change this in my writing or listening.

And I thought, wow. (Or words to that effect; I’m not sure you can actually think a wow.) We professors don’t have a corner on arrogance, do we?

Consider Mary’s implied claim. Here’s me, a native speaker with a Ph.D. in syntax, co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, head of a large department of linguistics and English language; and Mary thinks I can’t even make my pronouns agree correctly in number with their antecedents? Is that plausible?

Where are we supposed to turn for evidence about how to use English correctly if the usage of someone like me counts for nothing? If my 30 or 40 years of writing about English grammar confers no mantle of authority, what exactly would? Is there some certification course I could take? (I’m willing to do night classes.)

Of course, I make typing errors; but my finger hadn’t slipped in this case, and Mary didn’t think it had. And true, her reference to what must be “out the window in Scotland” suggests she might have thought that it was a regional dialect issue; but there isn’t, not here. There are virtually no differences between what Scots and Americans regard as normal syntax and semantics in connection with the morphology and syntax of pronouns (and anyway, I’m an American citizen and I’ve taught grammar for a quarter of a century in the U.S.A.).

She saw me as straightforwardly violating a rule of grammar. But how could there be a rule of grammar that I was still clueless about after 50 years of using the language? I’ll tell you. She has the rule wrong. Nearly all published grammars have it wrong. Mary had been taught an inaccurate agreement rule. It is not true that every antecedent for the pronoun they must be plural (in the sense of requiring plural subject-verb agreement).

Here’s something a lot closer to the truth (I oversimplify only a little). The so-called “third person plural” pronoun is actually used in two circumstances: (i) when the antecedent has clear reference and its number is definitely plural, and (ii) when there isn’t really any number to agree with. So we get clear contrasts like this (where the asterisk marks the string of words that follows it as grammatically impossible if we take Pat to be the antecedent of their):

[2]	*Pat doesn’t think the traffic congestion problems in this town are their fault.

[3]	Nobody ever thinks traffic congestion problems are their fault.

I’d never use [2]; nor would you, not even if you only knew Pat from email and didn’t know the right sex. But like almost everyone else who uses English normally, I would write [3], where there is no reference and thus no semantic singularity or plurality (nobody doesn’t refer to a person or a group of people), and the pronoun they has a meaning like a bound variable in formal logic (for no person x does it ever hold that x thinks traffic congestion problems are x’s fault). Example [1] above, which I actually did write, is another example of the same type as [3].

Copy editors and style manuals often deprecate morphosyntactically singular antecedents for they. They’re just wrong. They don’t base their position on the literary evidence or any other evidence (I will return to the matter of evidence in a later post). Some of the copy editors are just enforcing an overrestrictive house style at the behest of ignorant masters. Some of the style-manual authors think they are obeying logic or common sense or some kind of rule that comes down to us from time immemorial. They’re just mistaken.

It is hard to teach things like this. Notice that Mary said, “No way shall I ever be convinced to change this in my writing or listening.” And they call me arrogant! When I’m shown good evidence or reasoning, I change my mind about the correct formulation of the rules. Mary’s position is that “no way” will anyone convince her to revise her beliefs regardless of the evidence. She is beyond the reach of reason.

Linguists often find themselves trying to bring reason and argument to bear on topics where standard reactions are based on dogmatic intransigence, incoherent beliefs about logic, unfounded fears of ambiguity, warped ideas of history, blind trust in Strunk and White, or panic over imagined abandonment of standards.

I’m setting a homework assignment for the holiday period. Re-read the first act of The Importance of Being Earnest and tell me the most relevant thing you notice in it concerning the topic of this post. No late hand-ins, please. I will return to this topic in January.

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brett_p

What I’d like to know is how someone can enforce a rule in their *listening*. Is ‘Mary’ selectively deaf to speakers who violate her rules? Does she mentally correct every perceived error? Does she have a Strunk-and-White babelfish in her ear?

dw

I was about to make the same point!

I guess Mary has a “hear no evil” policy.

Bill Reader

Also, “Mary” should work on her mastery of the demonstrative pronoun. “This” should have been “that” when referring to a previous sentence or concept, if for no other reason than it respects the perspective of the reader rather than reinforces the narcissism of the writer.
http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com Richard Grayson

I trust your blog post will encourage conversation. One wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much.

cleverclogs

Ah, *that* Earnest quotation! All that was coming to mind for me was, “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.” – which is beyond reproach grammatically, if not intellectually.

jnorton

Too bad this article about pronoun agreement has a grammatical error in the first sentence: “. . . who I will call Mary” should be “whom I will call Mary”. Even the lead-in had a similar error: “Who are you supposed to trust on grammar if you can’t trust a native-speaking grammarian’s own considered usage? Geoff Pullum wonders. ” Shame on you, New York Times and Geoffrey Pullum.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Carol-Saller/100002198727755 Carol Saller

Oh, boy. Now we need a post blasting the who/whom superstition.
sleepwalker

While we’re at it, “Here’s me” is as fragile a construction as the one “jnorton”(love these pseudonyms!) objects to. Turn it around to expose the absurdity and you have dialect. The real problem isn’t lack of awareness on Mary’s part of bound variables (unless one is a cantankerous logician) or lack of clear semantic distinctions, but a gap in English syntax that doesn’t exist in other, related languages such as German (Mann), French (on), or other languages that simply use reflexive verbs for impersonal constructions. I used to hold fiercely to Mary’s position, but I’m coming round, not for Pullum’s reasons – rather, because the polymorphous, unisex “they”/”their” has been smuggled aboard the language via conversational usage by all speakers at most times. Mary and I were on Swift’s floating island.

dank48

Just picking a nit: the German indefinite pronoun is man: shorter and lowercased.
big_giant_head

Yes, and that act of smuggling occurred several hundred years ago.

eyeshaveit

Wow. The egotism exposed here is impressive. I enjoyed the piece and do not have the least desire to pretend to be smarter than the person who composed it.
frankwrite

In [3], if the antecedent were “no one” instead of “nobody,” would it still take “they” as its pronoun?
dank48

Mary should have to use thou, thee, thy, thine for the second-person singular until she sobers up.
rnelson50

Is nobody going to mention that “they” in this context is just a convenient way to avoid having to write “he or she?” In this case, does “they” become magically singular?

patrick_murtha

Actually, yes, it does. “They” and “their” have become the single-word alternatives in English for the awkward “he or she” and “his or her.” Our ears accept this easily – our eyes, too, unless we are prescriptivist grammar hounds playing a game of “Gotcha!” This “they” / “their” usage evolved as an elegant solution to a problem that existed in the language; languages in use are very adaptive that way!

zkeith

And in the sentence “It is hard to teach things like this,” isn’t “like” misused? Shouldn’t ”like” be changed to “such as?”
clarity_please

I find Mr. Pullum considerably more arrogant than “Mary.” His readers are expected to accept, on the basis of his thoroughgoing exposition of his own credentials, that he is the authority on this issue, whereas “nearly all published grammars” are wrong. Mary, at least, didn’t claim that she was the single possessor of the truth on this matter — only that she planned to hold to a rule she had been taught. And it’s really not such a bad rule.

I accept that “they” is sometimes used when “there really isn’t any number to agree with,” but I have strong doubts as to whether that’s the case with “nobody.” As another person commented on this post, “no one” would have made the author’s case harder to prove; it carries a much stronger singular sense, and many people would insist on its singular number. To me, the word “nobody” strikes the ear as meaning “not one body” — also strongly singular rhetorically, even if not (strictly speaking) grammatically. To say that “nobody doesn’t refer to a person or a group of people” is only apparently accurate, since the sense of his example sentence is exactly what Mr. Pullum provides as an example of a bound variable in logic: “for no person x does it ever hold that x thinks traffic congestion problems are x‘s fault.” Readers will notice that “x” cannot be substituted with a plural here. Only a singular will do, which is why, when we arrive at “x’s” we would need a singular pronoun; the referent is definitely singular, and thus does not fall under the rubric articulated above, i.e., that “they” may be used when “there really isn’t any number to agree with.”

The larger problem here, of course, is that grammar “rules” follow usage, and usage on this point is split. Some people, having been taught that negatives like “nobody” and non-specific references like “somebody” are grammatically singular, and who had always used “his” or “him” as a pronoun, were then taught the political and ideological importance of using “his or her” or “(to) her or him.” This is the structure to which most grammar in the academic world adheres. Such persons have sometimes been happy to dispense with this construction, so we have witnessed an increasing use of “they/their” in such circumstances, regardless of rhetorical context. But this is not a universal phenomenon. Other users seem to like the idea of the grammatically singular nature of “nobody” and “somebody,” and they use singular pronouns to refer to . And since Mr. Pullum is so excited about things that are “true,” he should note that it is *not* true that “everyone . . . who uses English normally” would write his example sentence [3], unless he cleverly defines “normal” as “the way that I would do it.”

I am looking forward to the reply, in which Mr. Pullum will perhaps tell us why he is correct to use “who” rather than “whom” in his first sentence; that nearly all published grammars on this topic are wrong; that I am arrogant for thinking that he is wrong in his usage; that “normal” users of English are perfectly correct to use the nominative case when grammar calls for the accusative; and that he can prove his case by pointing to a nineteenth-century play, preferably one that employs a style of English that practically no one uses today. He will then “assign” us that play as “homework” — in complete humility, of course.

nordicexpat

What pronoun would you use in a tag-question such as “No one/nobody in class handed in __ homework, did __? Or, in, say, “everyone in class handed in __ homework, didn’t __? I seriously doubt anyone would say, “no one handed in his homework, did *he*? (Obviously, some speakers would say “his” but I doubt they would use a singular form in the tag question). In this context, it’s debatable that “no one” is semantically, as opposed to syntactically, singular. I’m obviously referring to more than one person.

The first OED citation to an “ungrammatical” use of “who” is the 14th century, and of course it can be found in Shakespeare as well.

Pullum is exaggerating a bit about all grammar books being wrong. (hyperbole is obviously lost on some people). I doubt there is an academic book on English grammar written in the last 50 years that wouldn’t say the same thing.

aephirah

When we refer to “nobody,” it is not clear that, semantically, we are referring to (choose one):a) one person or b) more than one person. We are referring to “zero” persons.

nordicexpat

My badly expressed point was that if I say, “No one in class did __ homework, did __?” I ‘m basically saying something like “all students in the class have the property of not doing their homework, right?” The homework is the individual student’s, not zero person’s. And it may be significant here that you use the plural persons.

beedhamm

“Did ANY of you [insert expletive--in the plural] do your [optional expletive] homework?”

clarity_please

I would like to nominate this post by “beedhamm” as the very best post in the thread. I laughed until nobody were able to stand it any longer. Then nobody all got up and left.

clarity_please

I’m guessing that I wouldn’t use words like “nobody,” “no one,” or “everyone” in a sentence such as the one you propose, precisely because of the strong pull that I feel to treat these words as grammatically singular (for reasons described elsewhere in this thread). All in all, I think I’d prefer to use the expletive-laden form suggested by another post below — a post which gave me a hearty laugh and provided some needed levity in this conversation.

As for hyperbole being lost on some people — I suppose I plead guilty, but really, if the actual number of grammars in the last half-century that are “wrong” on this subject is “zero”, and Mr. Pullum’s inflates this to “nearly all,” is that really a case of hyperbole? Or does he, to use his own phrase, simply “have it wrong”?

Henry_Smith

No one doesn’t carry a singular sense in my mind. And I doubt that it does for most native speakers. Everyone who uses English normally would write his example sentence. To me, that there is an error in that sentence is something I find risible. Everyone who uses English normally would write that sentence. Everyone who uses English normally being those who haven’t been taught or been silly enough to swallow nonsensical rules.

I’d use “who” where Pullum uses it too. (Must I have a comma before “too”?) Pullum can prove his case by appealing to usage on this one. How many people actually use “whom” these days. Please be realistic. As for the nominative and accusative cases, English shed it’s case system long ago. All that remains are some vestiges of it in differing pronominal forms. “Who” and “Whom” were used interchangeably in English up until the 17 and 18 century when some grammarians decided that English should follow Latin grammar. (Check Shakespeare’s use of it). Grammar doesn’t call for “whom” in that context because all grammar comes from usage (where else). The latest grammar books tell us that “who” is normal in that position. And so it is.

bizdean

OK, Geoffrey, you’re miffed, we get it. That someone would question the expertise of someone with your credentials and experience, oh my! Well, the Internet lets any fool comment on anybody’s work, and you just have to let it roll off your back. Did you take the high road by blogging about the incident, using a pseudonym for the offender, rather than confronting her directly – or just forgetting the whole thing?
marcleavitt

I spent 20 years as an editor inserting he/she, and his/her in editorial copy(or reshaping phrases to avoid ambiguity), until I got tired. It’s all nonsense. Singular “they” is idiomatic English; there are cites to back that up, going back centuries. One last point: Does it do the job?

jamescurrin

I hope that you spend an additional 100 years in purgatory for your cowardly substitution of he/she instead of the long accepted he. The argument that a word or phrase is idiomatic and therefore acceptable in professional writing is stupid. So is “F**k you”, idiomatic, but not acceptible, no matter how aptly it may apply.

tappat

Forget ‘em pronouns — what ’bout ‘em words!?!? Is it “communications” or “communication,” “literature” or “literatures,” “mathematics” or “mathematic,” “politics” or “politic,” “effect” or “affect,” “he or she” or “zhe” (oops, this or that is or are (a) pronoun(s) — sorry, guess I didn’t forget good or well enough, even after I wuz the one to call for it!). I wonder if anything could be fouler to Fowler.
dheretick

I’m glad you pointed out this grammatical rule as it seems to have been lost in contemporary speech and writing, much as not using “whom” when it is the object of a verb (e.g., “who I will call Mary” should be “whom I will call Mary”) and beginning sentences with “and” or “but.” As one who works with graduate students who are required to use APA formatting for professional writing, it is often difficult to help them get past the commercial/newspaper versions of English they see in everyday print (and, yes, that includes trying to convince students about agreement of subjects and verbs, pronouns and referents, not using single hyphens to set off thoughts, avoiding run-on or incomplete sentences, using a comma before “and” or “or” when in a series of more than two items, and several other conventions of grammar, punctuation, and writing mechanics). The use of the plural pronoun seems to have crept in to help us avoid gender-biased language or having to say both “he” and “she” or “his” and “her.” APA suggests using plural forms of the referent so the plural form of the pronoun would later be appropriate, but never to mix a singular referent with a plural pronoun.

dank48

“As one who works . . . , it is often difficult to . . .”

How do you feel about danglers?

jlawler42

We all try. We all fail.
http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/June05Eye.pdf
cbobbitt

I respect the tirade about objections to plural personal pronouns standing for antecedents that are indefinite pronouns. I cannot accept any of the arguments, however, for replacing singular phrases such as “a writer” or “an exception” with plurals like “their” or “them.”

dank48

The mistake is in pigeonholing “they,” “them,” “their,” “theirs” as exclusively plural. Reference to the OED and numerous other sources will tell you they’ve been used as indefinite third-person singular pronouns for centuries. The notion that there’s anything new about this is a superstition.

Can you accept any of the arguments for using the plural second-person forms for singular, or are you still using “thou,” “thee,” “thy,” and “thine” when addressing one person?

clarity_please

Just for the record: even when “thou” and its relatives were still in common use, “you” and its relatives were not strictly plural forms. “You” (formerly “ye”), as well as “your” and “yours” were used as singulars in more formal settings, whereas “thou” usually implied familiarity or intimacy, like the tu/vous distinction in French or the Sie/du distinction in German. So the adoption of “you” as a singular was not the adoption of a formerly plural form as the singular; it was the adoption of a formerly “formal” form for all second-person singular circumstances.

dank48

Just for the record, take a look at the record.

The parallel with German is not exact, since German retains the plural second person, ihr, euch, euch, euer, along with the singular du, dich, dir, dein. The formal Sie, Sie, Ihnen, Ihr is simply the third-person plural, written with initial cap, used for second-person, both singular and plural.

It’s archaic these days, but as recently as forty years ago, in rural parts of Germany one could hear Ihr used in addressing one person, as a sort of politer than the familiar but not so distant as the formal form. (I was the single person being so addressed.) That was more usual once upon a time; see e.g. Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm, in which a master says “du” to his servant, and the servant says “Ihr” to his master.
dank48

And btw “ye” was the subjective; “you” was the objective. The objective took over the role of the subjective, similarly to toddlers’ “Me want” and the, er, casual “Him and me went home.”

11182967

As Charles Lamb might have said, there are two kinds of people: those who understand that “rules” of grammar are ultimately based in usage and are this flexible to accomodate needs (such as for a common pronoun to avoid the awkwarness of “his and her” every time one could simply say “their”) and those who enjoy memorizing rules and always saying “his or her” in order to try to impress everyone else with their supposedly superior command of the language.

Pullum does sound a tad arrogant, but I understand his frustration. I’ve had a professional lifetime as an English professor trying to explain to the A+ students of Ms. Grundy that there are more significant aspects of language than being able to have the eight parts of speech come tripping lightly off my tongue as I diagram yet another compound (or is that complex?) sentence.

The unfortunate thing about the Grundyites is their tendency to be members of the grammar police in order to punish, with ridicule–and, when possible, bad grades–those miscreants who, no matter their other linguistic abiltiies, run afoul of whatever rigid set of rules were contained in the text (now gospel) which they used in high school or freshman composition. Grammar, like other aspects of language, should be a tool to enhance communication, not a weapon with which to bludgeon people.

big_giant_head

Thank you. I wish I could “like” your post with a thousand glittery stars.
http://twitter.com/stylinjulie Jewels

“Grammar, like other aspects of language, should be a tool to enhance communication, not a weapon with which to bludgeon people.” Marvelous. Sad that if I want to quote you, I only have “11182967″ as the author’s name…

11237108

I’m a bit resigned. It would seem that if this topic is THAT important then it would be taught, for the majority of us that are not Linguistic/Grammar experts, from Kinder level forward. But sadly, the rule(s) mentioned are not covered. Most of us are generalists in grammar usage thus our adherence to Strunk & White. I care about usage and I’m passionate about learning. But truthfully, getting my students to see the importance of language and style is a struggle. It appears to be the least of their concerns. And when I saw a Honda ad proclaiming our (public’s) differences in their tag line “To each their own,” I cringed and realized that grammar is the public’s least concern too.
johnlovell

Mary is correct. You are wrong. And you were also wrong to write “a woman I have never met, who I will call Mary…” Can you see why?

Henry_Smith

Consider your implied claim. Here’s someone, a native speaker with a Ph.D. in syntax, co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, head of a large department of linguistics and English language; and you think he doesn’t know of the prescriptive nonsense about “who” vs “whom”.

How can he be “wrong” about it. He’s the one that wrote the latest definitive grammar book on the language. Why is it that the earlier grammar books are more accurate than the later ones? And since there is no official grammar of English how do you decide what is right or wrong?

If you get a copy of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, you’ll see that the subject of “who” vs “whom” is thoroughly covered.
terrycollmann

John, I’m afraid everybody is out of step except you here. “Whom” is dead. Nobody uses it, Geoff is right not to use it. You’re wrong to insist that a “rule” followed by almost no one in the English-speaking world is “correct” Can you see why? And the same goes for singular “they”.

sahara

“WHOM” IS NOT DEAD!!

dank48

“. . . because the stakes are so small.”
dheidenreich

If you are serious about your position, why not say “everyone think,” using a plural verb with “their”? I’m with “Mary” on this one.

magyar

It’s not a ‘position’: it’s a statement of fact about the usage of the last six hundred years. If you are in the slightest bit interested in facts (as opposed to maintaining a position) it is not difficult, with internet access, to do some reading. You might want to try Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage for a start. You don’t even need to buy it: here is a link to it free online -
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=merriam+webster+dictionary&hl=en&sa=X&ei=q1zuTvWaGpCL4gSm8-2SDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=they&f=false
jffoster

Dost you therefore say “you art” when the pronoun ‘you’ clearly has a single person as referent?
dank48

Nope. The point is that “they” etc. are used as singular indefinite pronouns, with singular verbs of course. Indeed, the singularity is most pronounced with the form “themself,” which the OED says goes back to the 14th century and which people still use today, simply because “themselves” is clearly plural.
terrycollmann

Because it’s not natural English – while singular “they” is. If you’re with “Mary”, you’re in a vanishingly tiny minority. Enjoy yourselves.

clarity_please

This last point is an important one. The reason that so many people think of words like “everyone” and “somebody” and “nobody” as singular is that, almost universally, we use them that way when forced to choose: “Somebody is going to pay for this.” “Is anybody listening?” “Nobody’s home.” No competent English speaker would use plural verbs in these cases. From this point, it’s not too wild an inference to treat such words are grammatically singular and to use singular pronouns to refer to them — especially for those of us who are not professional grammarians and therefore can only keep a certain number of details in our heads.

Of course, in the end, this is a case where rhetoric trumps grammar. The most important reason to avoid using “they” to refer to these words, as well as avoiding (whenever possible) split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions, is not a grammatical rule; it’s the fact that such usage bugs the hell out of some people. If you’re someone who can offend a competent user of the language and then just ridicule that person’s Grundyism by blogging for the Chronicle on the subject, then I guess you’re free and clear. Most of us don’t have that luxury. When I write an e-mail, or a cover letter, or a book manuscript that violates these non-rules and thereby offends the reader, the result may be that my e-mail won’t get answered, or I won’t get the job, or my book won’t get published. So I will continue to urge my students to avoid splitting infinitives and to treat “anybody” as grammatically singular, because those readers for whom these matters are important will be grateful (“wrong” though they may be, according to some grammarians), while others probably won’t notice.

Henry_Smith

Are you serious? Who on earth these days ever avoids splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions? I don’t believe this. You teach your students to avoid splitting infinitives or ending sentence with prepositions? Please find an example of a published book that doesn’t do both. If someone sends me an email or a manuscript that avoids ending clauses or sentences (I doubt that you even fully understand the rule) with prepositions I’d tear it up. Such writing would sound ridiculous to most people.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=707737544 MJ Devaney

How readers will react is a valid concern, but by the same token, one doesn’t want to be ruled by ignorance. Pointing out time and again that some notion or another about the language is utterly ill-informed can eventually have an effect–this has certainly happened with the proscription against split infinitives; almost no grammar text today upholds it.
tom_sawallis

Your point is a false one. Plenty of competent (yes, competent) English speakers could comfortably continue your examples thus: “Somebody is going to pay for this when I find them.” “Is anybody listening, ’cause they sure should.” ” Nobody’s home, or else they’re hiding from us.”

When you use pronouns to refer to unknown antecedents, English forces you to violate something — either agreement or semantics. It’s obligatory. You can’t speak English without it. If you don’t know who did something, and you stick conventionally with the grammatically singular indefinite pronouns, you have to falsely claim you know the sex of the antecedent, since English singular pronouns are gendered. You may also be falsely claiming knowledge that they acted alone (and for that matter that they’re human). This mess is why Pullum shows Sentence 2. Consider the acrobatics you’d need
to pronoun up a sentence where you know the identity, but not the sex,
of the singular antecedent. If you flip to plurals, you falsely claim more antecedents than are actually involved, but you no longer falsely absolve one sex of its potential antecedency. So speakers naturally flip back and forth, sometimes staying conventional, sometimes emphasizing the indefinitude at hand.

Of course you’re right about rhetoric trumping grammar. Which is why Pullum takes the trouble to ridicule the Grundies’ grammatical INcompetence in this Chronicle blog, and why he has to detail his expertise up front. He’s not just bragging; his background and scholarship give him standing as a true authority, even if his blog shows him a crusty one. When petty martinets claim to correct him, it’s a bit like a high school football coach telling Stephen Hawking there’s no such thing as space-time because time is measured in minutes and space in feet and inches. Pullum knows the history of normative school grammars, the justified variety of usages they ignored in “formalizing” their rules, and the puny effect those rules had on the alleged misusages, which continue since they are actually needed, specifically because rhetoric trumps grammar. Pullum (with others: cf. e.g. Pinker vs. language mavens, the folks at Language Log) fights the good fight against ignorant pettifoggers who believe they are standing up for language standards but are in fact using false criteria to enforce a false conformity to a false linguistic uniformity that never was and can never be.

So I’ve been teaching my students via a couple demos that many normative rules are bogus and language is much richer and more fun than that, but that learning which rules are bogus how is for specialists and the obsessed, with minimal payoff in daily life. Students should think of such rules as the conventional little white lies of language, and should use them to write defensively, because Grundyism, like smoking, is a minor character flaw they sometimes have to put up with in others, but that they shouldn’t never inflict on nobody else and needn’t suffer their own selves.
http://twitter.com/HemmensBen Ben Hemmens

“So I will continue to urge my students to …”
I won’t say knowing about false rules is of no value, but I’d say they only become relevant when you’ve finished teaching your students all the real things they need to know.

sahara

Refer to the article above this one in the Chronicle entitled “More on ‘So”…

magyar

Forget the arrogance of accusing Prof Pullum of not knowing his own grammar: after all, as he said, he is merely a native speaker with a Ph.D. in syntax, co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, head of a large department of linguistics and English Language. The true arrogance is ignoring the evidence of usage of the best writers through the ages. As I have said elsewhere: when faced with a choice between the judgment of the Marys of this world and the example set by writers whose names will be remembered and whose work will be read long after I am gone, I choose the writers.
Jeroboam

But why does [1] seem so much better than [3]?
debbiejane

Can we ever agree to let the goal of clarity in communication guide
us rather than argue incessantly over rules? Let’s be arrogant about demanding clarity.

sahara

…let’s just not be arrogant.

JB_CO

Why get so wrought up when there’s such a simple gender-free solution for Mary?

[1]She would never be acerbic to anybody until *it* stepped over the line and really deserved it.
jamescurrin

In Prof?. Pullum’s very first sentence, he makes himself out to be a fool, at least for someone who advertises himself as having a PHD in Syntax:

“I exchanged a few e-mails about grammar with a woman I have
never met, who I will call Mary, since that is not her name.” The ungrammatical substitution of “who” for “whom” shows that he is singularly incapable of discussing the agreement of relative pronouns with their antecedents. His discussion of “they” as a permissible relative to a singular antecedent is incomprehensible when it is not wrong. The use of “they” as a relative pronoun for an antecedent that is singular but of indeterminate gender, has crept into our language in recent years through its usage by sissified professors, primarily male, who are terrified of using the long accepted “he” in such situations, and who are terrified to incur the wrath of the ignorant feminists who now police our institutions of higher learning.
[1]
aweiss

After I lived in London for ten years I gave up on insisting that a singular subject take a singular verb, so often did I hear “my family have…” or “the government are…” It is only a short hop from there to pronoun disagreement. I notice that Geoffrey Pullum studied linguistics in the U.K.