| 词组 | agreement: indefinite pronouns |
| 释义 | agreement: indefinite pronouns The indefinite pronouns anybody, anyone, each, either, everybody, everyone, neither, nobody, somebody, someone share an interesting and often perplexing characteristic: they are usually grammatically singular and often notionally plural. The result is mixed usage with respect to number agreement with verbs and pronouns. Bryant 1962 reports 25 studies of verb agreement with indefinite pronouns and finds both singular and plural verbs in use, but with the singular outnumbering the plural in the ratio of six to one. Curme 1931 and Quirk et al. 1985 both say the singular verb is usual; the singular verb also predominates in the Merriam-Webster files. Curme associates the occurrence of a plural verb after any of the indefinite pronouns (except neither) with older English (he cites Tom Jones, for instance). You are safe in assuming that the singular verb will be right. Pronoun agreement has been more problematical. Conflict here revolves around the use of the pronouns they, their, them, themselves to refer to the indefinite pronouns. Such use, OED evidence shows, goes back to the 14th century. It has been disparaged as improper since the 18th century, however, when such grammarians as Lowth and Lindley Murray decreed the indefinite pronouns singular. Two considerations have strengthened the use of the plural pronoun in reference to a preceding indefinite. The first is notional concord; the indefinite pronouns are often notionally plural—some, indeed, more often than others—and in early modern English (before the 18th century) agreement is largely governed by notional concord. The other is the much-touted lack of a common-gender third person singular pronoun in English. How early they, their, them begins to be used as a common-gender singular is uncertain; perhaps Sir Kenelm Digby's use of their referring back to one in the middle of the 17th century (cited in the OED) represents such a use. Let us look at a few examples from the letters of Thomas Gray, written in the second quarter of the 18th century, nearly a quarter century before Lowth and a half century before Murray. In the first he speaks of "People of high quality" in Paris and of their devotion to gambling: • Another thing is, there is not a House where they don't play, nor is any one at all acceptable, unless they do so too —21 Apr. 1739 Notional agreement seems to explain they in this instance, as it does in the next: • ... if any body don't like their Commons, they send down into the Kitchen —31 Oct. 1734 In this letter Gray is complaining of not being written to; them might be interpreted here as a common-gender singular: • What! to let any body reside three months at Rheims, and write but once to them? —18 Sept. 1739 At any rate the plural pronouns, whether through notional agreement or through being used as common-gender singulars, were well entrenched when Lowth issued his opinion, as his footnote attests; in it he corrects the translators of the King James Bfble, Addison in The Spectator, and Richard Bentley, the scholar and critic. Lindley Murray has even more passages to correct, but their authors are unidentified. Lowth's tradition continued deep into the 19th century. Hodgson 1889, for instance, corrects the grammar of such seasoned practitioners as Mrs. Gaskell, Jane Austen, Sydney Smith, John Ruskin, Charles Reade, and Leslie Stephen. (Our latter-day critics satisfy themselves with smaller game, reproving anonymous journalists, media personalities, and a mixed bag of educators and bureaucrats.) Hodgson also notes the problem of the common-gender singular; he cites a 19th-century grammarian named Bain, who approved the plural use. "Grammarians," writes Bain, "frequently call this construction an error, not reflecting that it is equally an error to apply 'his' to feminine subjects. The best writers (Defoe, Paley, Byron, Miss Austen, &c.) furnish examples of the use of the plural as a mode of getting out of the difficulty." The professor's tolerant attitude toward the plural did not satisfy Hodgson, however; he insisted that the gender difficulty should be removed by revision (the same advice set forth in such 20th-century sources as Bernstein 1962 and Bremner 1980). Curme 1931 found the use of the plural to be typical of older literature and to have survived in popular speech; Bryant 1962 considers they, their, them established as the third person common-gender singular in all but the most formal usage. The howls of the spiritual descendents of Lowth and Lindley Murray notwithstanding, the plural they, their, them with an indefinite pronoun as referent is in common standard use, both as common-gender singular and to reflect notional agreement. We give you a few examples below. Since many of the individual indefinite pronouns have received considerable comment, they have been treated separately (see anybody, anyone; each; everybody, everyone, for instance), and more examples of each will appear at those entries. • ... nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 • Someone told me last night that they.... —Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day," 1941, cited in H. L. Mencken, The American Language, Supplement II, 1948 • ... always look around ... to see if any of the girls playing in the street was her, but they never were — Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel, 1958 • Whenever anyone uses the pressure of usage to force you to accept the nonsensical and swallow the solecism, here's what to tell them —Safire 1984 |
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