They - WikiHQ

In Modern English, they is a third-person pronoun relating to a grammatical subject.

Morphology

In Standard Modern English, they has five distinct word forms:

they: the nominative (subjective) form
them: the accusative (objective, called the 'oblique'.) and a non-standard determinative form.
their: the dependent genitive (possessive) form
theirs: independent genitive form
themselves: prototypical reflexive form
themself: derivative reflexive form (nonstandard; now chiefly used instead of "himself or herself" as a reflexive epicenity for they in pronominal reference to a singular referent)

History

Old English had a single third-person pronoun , which had both singular and plural forms, and they wasn't among them. In or about the start of the 13th century, they was imported from a Scandinavian source (Old Norse , Old Danish, Old Swedish , ), in which it was a masculine plural demonstrative pronoun. It comes from Proto-Germanic *thai, nominative plural pronoun, from PIE *to-, demonstrative pronoun. According to The Cambridge History of the English Language:

The development in Middle English is shown in the following table. At the final stage, it had reached its modern form.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Three stages of they in Middle English

!II

!III

! Nominative

! Oblique

| ~

! Genitive

| ~

Singular they

Singular they is a use of they as an epicene (gender-neutral) pronoun for a singular referent. In this usage, they follows plural agreement rules (they are, not *they is), but the semantic reference is singular. Unlike plural they, singular they is only used for people. For this reason, it could be considered to have personal gender. Some people refuse to use the epicene pronoun they when referring to individuals on the basis that it is primarily a plural pronoun instead of a singular pronoun. However, the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary records usage of they "referring to an individual generically or indefinitely", with examples dating from a1405–2019.

Word of the year

In December 2019, Merriam-Webster chose singular they as word of the year. The word was chosen because "English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years."

Syntax

Functions

They can appear as a subject, object, determiner or predicative complement.

Generic

The pronoun they can also be used to refer to an unspecified group of people, as in "In Japan they drive on the left", or "They are putting in a new restaurant across the street." It often refers to the authorities, or to some perceived powerful group, sometimes sinister: "They don't want the public to know the whole truth."

References