Showing posts with label pronouns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pronouns. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Preemptive strike against pronoun prescriptivists

Steven Pinker says "they" and "they" are homonyms, so suck it. Plus check out these examples from the wikipedia page, so suck it some more.

  • Eche of theym sholde ... make theymselfe redy. — Caxton
  • Arise; one knocks. / ... / Hark, how they knock! — Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
  • 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech. — Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly. — Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
  • That's always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. — Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
  • Caesar: "No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed." / Cleopatra: "But they do get killed". — Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901)