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fluffyhamster · Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 4:39 am Post subject:

The student who posed the original question is overthinking (or rather, underthinking) things in trying to force "gender unknown their" onto and into a "gender immaterial or will be known in a wider context" example. The next question might then just as well be 'Whose, which people's, bath?', and/or if the 'its bath' refers to the literal container object or the water sloshing around in it. Rolling Eyes

TBH I find it a rather pathological questioning of the language.

Perilla · Joined: 09 Jul 2010 Posts: 792 Location: Hong Kong

johntpartee · Joined: 02 Mar 2010 Posts: 3258

That was a sarcastic rolling of the eyes, Perilla; of course it's fine. Another way to put it would be "Duh-uh".

Sashadroogie · Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 8:01 am Post subject:

Hi Fluffy. I was wondering when you'd contribute to the thread. I'm a little disappointed in your take, though. I thought the student's question was quite perceptive. I, for one, had never noticed this issue before. I'm not sure that many of the other posters here had either. I am still unhappy with my answer's reasoning, though nobody else seems to have anything better to offer, so far. Hardly something pathological in any case.

fluffyhamster · Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 8:42 am Post subject:

Maybe I haven't paid enough attention to the question and the discussion that follows, but 'the baby' seems to me to quite clearly be not some unknown somebody or (the) person (who...they/their noun... ). Chucking a 'their' in with the bathwater has the effect of seeming to make the baby plural rather than indefinite - a sure indication of a semantic clash. Or, the listener or reader has no choice but to assign the literal container object meaning to any 'their bath', which makes this a baby appreciative beyond its years of bathroom fittings.

HLJHLJ · Joined: 06 Oct 2009 Posts: 1218 Location: Ecuador

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 2:43 pm Post subject:

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 3:15 pm Post subject:

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 5:15 pm Post subject:

Fluffy, are you say that 'the baby enjoyed its bath' is not representative of real English? Or ever, Johnslat's 'It's a boy'?

I do not think this is time-wasting, and I am surprised that you would term it so, given your interest in lexicogrammar. What gives, exactly?

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 8:12 pm Post subject:

@Sasha: It's English alright, but it (the original example) is more written (detached story-like narrative), or if a spoken utterance then apparently from somebody who doesn't know the baby's name or even its gender. Of course It's a boy! is fine (assuming the gender wouldn't've been established by ultrasound etc beforehand nowadays).

It would thus help if the students were made absolutely aware of these metafunctions~registers and modes, but if they'd prefer to deal with decontextualized exercise sentences and think up alternative hazy grammars for them, that is of course their prerogative.

The main point however is that the 'the baby' (definite, and singular) doesn't then sit well with the "indefinite" (well, it would be indefinite if there were an indefinite pronoun to refer back to) and here plural 'their bath'. Note also that the clash is within the same short sentence - perhaps stretches of more than a single sentence would allow more "errant" grammar (see next paragraph)?

Establishing the gender of infants is of course a pressing and important matter (as others have pointed out - nobody likes to go around using 'it' or 'its' for longer than is otherwise necessary for a poor tyke), but introducing the 'their' usage (borrowed from indefinite-anaphor, gender-ambiguous-tolerant [IAGAT LOL] usages) does nothing to help in this regard, and in fact makes the sentence ungrammatical (in terms of disagreement between two assumedly definite pronouns - the reader or listener doesn't assign an IAGAT reading to the second, given that the first was definite and singular, but assigns to the second the only available definite and plural reference, in this case the owners of the bath LOL), mean something other than what the "their-introducing" student wants it to mean. Kudos to ??/*them (him or her) for knowing the IAGAT usage, but it's overreaching to misapply it. Or am I missing something?

Short version: in trying to overapply a function, there is a clash of forms.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 9:10 pm Post subject:

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 9:18 pm Post subject:

Maybe you should do a study of exactly how many, and which gender, "continue" to speak like that, Sash. It would quite likely be a lot more productive than pondering how many use 'their' following definite/"known" singular references - or do we have to take every student's passing linguistic fancy so very seriously?

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 9:23 pm Post subject:

Fluffy, I am not sure what exactly your angle is here. If you do not think this is a worthy enough topic for contemplation, why do you contribute?

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 9:26 pm Post subject:

I've simply been trying to work out and offer an explanation~correction for your student. If there's anything wrong with what I've concluded so far, it'd be good to know.

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 9:28 pm Post subject:

Just the implication that it is not worth answering the student's question. Not sure why anyone would want to say that. That both the asking and the attempt at answering are misguided. Seems unnecessarily negative to me.