Pronouns of "somebody", "anybody", etc

I am a little confused about the usage of pronouns. I often see people using "their" with words that seem to be singular, for example, "somebody" and "anybody", which looks weird to me. (I.e., one person has recently said to me: "If somebody is hating on someone due to the pitch of their voice...") I would rather say: "...to the pitch of his/her voice...". So who is correct?

Answer

In the recent past, male pronouns were used as generic pronouns in English, and the sentence would have typically read "hating someone due to the pitch of his voice."

To modern ears, the older convention sounds dated, sexist and inaccurate, but no one has really come up with a good alternative. The most common practice, as you've noted, is using plural pronouns, which are gender neutral but grammatically incorrect. It is gender neutral and singular, but dehumanizing. Some people use his/her, or more properly his or her, but this is clumsy and wordy. Others switch back and forth between using him and her as the generic pronoun, but you see that more often in writing than in casual speech. You also run the risk of making it sound as if you're pandering to stereotypes --or creating new ones --if you choose poorly which sentence to assign to which gender.

Sometimes you can put the sentence in the second person (as in this sentence) but that makes it sound like you are addressing the person directly. One can also use the word one as a generic pronoun, but it sounds stilted and is not very flexible. The final alternative is to recast the entire sentence in the plural, which fixes the grammar, but at the cost of changing the sentence.

There are also newly coined gender neutral singular pronouns such as zhe but none of those has really caught on yet.

Use of the definite article

Sentence 1:

I completely agree with this notion and will make the case for it by
analyzing the benefits that physical training classes bring to
youngsters.

In sentence 1 we must use the definite article because everyone knows which benefits phys-ed classes bring to youngsters, it's just a common sense.

Sentence 2:

Finally, the governmental financial reward for the organizations
that have incorporated kitchens and gyms into their office spaces
would be another effective (sound) countermeasure against the
deterioration of public health.

Here we must not use the definite article because there are a lot of such organizations, and it's impossible to say which exactly the author means.

Am I right?

Answer

You do have to use article (the) in the sentence number two too as you are specifying the organizations by using relative pronoun "that". Here you are talking about those organizations which have incorporated kitchens and gyms
into their office spaces.

usage - Question on Garner's explanation of subjunctive

I'm puzzled by an example given in Garner's Modern English Usage illustrating correct use of the subjunctive mood. In this example, Garner offers both the incorrect and the correct usage: "But the truth is, if it wasn't [read hadn't been] for a last-minute infusion of cash by an out-of-state lobbying group, the initiative would not have even garnered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot."

Is hadn't been used here because of some grammatical relationship with would not have later in the sentence? I would have expected weren't to replace wasn't here (not hadn't been).

Many thanks for any insight.

Hyphenation of non-combat-related injury

As I understand it, we are to hyphenate phrases which consist of several adjectives strung together to form a single thought. I would, therefore, assume "non-combat-related injury" is the proper hyphenation of the phrase. "Non-combat" should be hyphenated, without question, but should the hyphen exist between "combat" and "related"? Normally I would assume so, but attempting to Google it, I find that most of the top hits suggest "non-combat related injury" is standard. It sounds like it is a related injury (!?) of the non-combat variety (umm...), but apparently, it's standard.

I was just going to run with it until I realized I also had to use the phrase "combat-related injury" wherein the hyphen does, commonly, come between combat and related - as expected.

Should I stick to the standard hyphenation ("non-combat related injury") or try to smooth things over grammatically by saying "non-combat-related injury"? Or am I overthinking it? Or am I missing something obvious?

Answer

Let's overthink this together.

The basic structure is non- + X, meaning “not X”; and X in this case is the hyphenated “combat-related”; argal, non-combat-related. So your initial instinct was (to my mind) correct.

But as you realize, that’s not a very happy result. What you’re trying to do is to distinguish injuries which are “related to combat” from those which are “not related to combat”. By taking “combat-related” rather than “related to combat” as your base form, you’re essentially locking yourself into a structure in which further hyphenation must give rise to an ambiguity: does non- apply to combat or to combat-related — or possibly only to related?

When that happens to me I take it as a sign that I’m treating the syntax as if it were a mathematical formula instead of an organism. I’m trying to push the language in a direction it’s not designed to go. So I look for a way to rewrite. I see several options:

1. combat-related injury / combat-unrelated injury ... unambiguous, but not to my ear English.


2. combat injury / non-combat injury ... acceptable (what does -related add to your discussion?), but may not suit the context—for instance, you may be dealing with a DoD-defined category named “combat-related”.


3. combat-related injury / injury, not combat-related ... truly awful, but at one time pretty much the US Armed Forces standard


4. combat-related injury / other injury ... the bureaucratic throw-your-hands-in-the-air solution.


5. CR injury / non-CR injury or even NCR injury ... ugly, but if your publisher buys in it saves typing, so somebody wins something.


6. combat-related injury / injury not related to combat ... ponderous, but unambiguous.

My vote would be 2 if it will fly, 6 if it won't—and *combat-related / not combat-related if you're dealing with DoD rules.

word choice - Questioning my use of "in question"

I just found myself writing some documentation that uses "in question," but then I questioned whether what I wrote makes sense. The context is a document that describes the numerical solution of different classes of various initial value ordinary differential equation (ODE for short), with the assumption that the reader of the document will know what that gobbledygook means.

Here's what I wrote:

[This module] supports a number of classes of numerical integration problems,
characterized by the nature of the underlying ODE: ...

• Problems such as propagating the translational state of a vehicle.
  This class of problems involves propagating a vector quantity and its
  time derivative based on the second time derivative of the vector quantity
  in question.

For example, think of advancing position and velocity over time given a magical function that computes acceleration (but the problem is more generic than that).

Is my use of in question here grammatically correct and also clear, or should I rewrite and use some other phraseology?

Answer

It's correct and clear, referring back to the aforementioned vector, but you could also use this vector or the same vector. In question can suggest an effort to determine the vector, but it reads fine to me.

pronouns - Formal writing: "…for my colleagues and {I/me/myself}."?

I'm currently using Cambridge English Advanced 1. It's a book that contains past examination papers, and includes numerous samples of authentic writing. This material helps, candidates and teachers, understand what the examiners are ‘testing’ and how these papers are marked.

The assessment covers four categories: content, communicative achievement, organisation and language. Each category is awarded a mark between 1 and 5, so the maximum score is 20, and each mark has a brief note attached by the examiner.

Any errors of punctuation, orthography, grammar, appropriacy, and vocabulary are left intact. In fact, there are no corrections because the ‘examiner’ does not specify where the errors lie. This can be frustrating, even though spelling mistakes are rare at the advanced level, and errors in style, collocation or register are still relatively easy to identify, sometimes I'll read a phrase that forces me to ponder.

Dear Director,

[ TEXT ]

To conclude, this letter is a polite request to cover the costs of a 2 month language course for my colleagues and me. We would be very pleased if the company would do us this favour.

Yours sincerely

John Smith

The following marks were awarded

Content                    5    blah, blah, …
Communicative Achievement  2    blah, blah, …    
Organisation               3    blah, blah, …

Language                   3    blah, blah, …

I am able to pick out six minor errors in that brief extract, maybe some users will identify more, maybe some will identify fewer, and maybe some will say that the language used is perfectly acceptable. But if I can help a candidate attain that elusive B, I would be delighted.

I am interested in (what could be) the 7th error, emphasised in bold.

Because the letter of proposal is formal, I feel the phrase, for my colleagues and me, is jarring. I want to change it to for my colleagues and I, but the antecedent requires an object.

You would not say: “This is a request to cover the cost […] for I”. So, why use the subject pronoun I in the expression “my colleagues and…”?

• Could I use instead, myself?




• Which of the following is preferable in a formal written proposal?

…for my colleagues and me
…for my colleagues and I
…for my colleagues and myself

EDITED: I found a pdf file of the writing sample (11/11) if anyone is interested.

---

I've looked at the following question, Should I put myself last? "me and my friends" vs. "my friends and me" or "my friends and I" Some answers appear to be contradictory, the accepted answer says using I and me are both grammatical, which in my example is not true. Moreover, there's no mention of myself, as a possible solution, in the question.

Answer

When occurring as object of a preposition like this, both my colleagues and me and my colleagues and I would be found in the formal English of standard speakers. Of course, there are always people who'd like to try and rationalise the facts of the language into what they feel would be a more sensible way of doing things. But, of course, you can no more rationalise a language into common sense that you can rationalise your body into a more rational shape. If trying to make English into a different, more rational language, we could argue that because the first person pronoun in the co-ordination would appear in the accusative case if it appeared on its own as the object of a transitive preposition, it should appear in the accusative case when in a coordination:

• a course for me



• *a course for I (ungrammatical)

However, this ignores the fact that this pronoun is not the object of the preposition in the Original Example. The grammatical object of the preposition is a coordination of noun phrases.

Huddleston & Pullum say the following about non-subject co-ordinations with I as the second coordinate:

Because these coordinate nominatives are perceived to be associated with the avoidance of stigmatised accusatives in subject coordinations, they are often described as hypercorrections. This is to imply that they are 'incorrect', not established forms in the standard language. Construction [32i] with I as final coordinate is, however, is so common in speech and used by so broad a range of speakers that it has to be recognised as a variety of Standard English, and we will reserve the term hypercorrection for examples like [23ii] and [24].

An example sentence from [23i] is:

It would be an opportunity for you and I to spend some time together.

Regarding the CAE exam, it highly doubtful that the case of the pronoun in question is going to make any difference to the grade here. What is required is natural language of the appropriate style. Both me and I will suffice for this purpose. In terms of helping the student, I would tend to err on the side of range rather than absolute accuracy in any case if you are after one of those elusive higher grades.

grammar - Is the subject "there" flawed?

This is a follow-up question to this one and I understand the difference between "there" and "here".

I understand "there" functions differently from the adverb "here", but it leads to another question. It might sound too basic, but I believe it is relevant to why there could be some uncertainty in accepting there as a subject.

1. If you Google search "There is a dog in the house" and "There is my dog in the house", there is not a single hit for the latter, zero, nothing, nada while I get 738,000 hits for the former. You get 258,000 hits for "My dog is in the house".




2. If you Google search "There is a cat in the house" and "There is my cat in the house", still you get no hit for the latter and 358,000 hits for the former. You get 767,000 hits for "My cat is in the house".

You don't find any results for "There is my dog in his/her/our/their house", either.

Apparently, there doesn't seem to be used when determiner "my" (or other possessives) is used for a noun.

Another flaw, if you like, is a subject-verb agreement.

There sometimes takes a singular "be" for a "plural noun" that follows it. As @John Lawler pointed out in the answer

There's one biscuit left ~ There's a unicorn in the garden ~ There's
someone here to see you. (One can say There is, but it's far commoner
to start a There-Insertion sentence with There's
-- even when the postposed subject is plural -- There's some people here to see you).

There are some people here to see you is much more broadly used as the below shows.

My question is:

1. Is the subject "there" as a "dummy subject" flawed as the above-mentioned points seem to suggest?




2. Using a singular verb "be" before a "plural" noun ungrammatical?





3. Why is there no usage of "there is my dog in the house"?

Note: I am reluctant to ask the third question and please disregard it if you consider it to be "too basic a question".

Thank you!

Answer

1. I can't see any reason to doubt its function as subject in existential constructions. I wouldn't call its function 'dummy subject', though, as that implies it is not the syntactic subject, which it clearly is.




2. Existential there is an unusual subject; it has no inherent number, but takes on the number of the displaced subject:

There were some keys near the safe. (plural with were)

There was a nurse present. (singular with was)

It’s comparable to the relative pronouns which and who, which take on the number of their antecedent (the guys who were talking vs the guy who was talking). However, in informal style, especially in present tense declaratives with reduced is, many speakers treat there as always singular: they say There’s a few problems instead of There are a few problems. Prescriptivists disapprove, but the usage is too well established to be treated as an occasional slip.

3. There is a strong tendency for the displaced NP to be indefinite, as in There is a dog in the house, but my dog is a definite NP in There's my dog in the house, which is why it is ungrammatical (at least in most dialects). However, definite NPs are admissible provided they represent addressee-new information, as in:

A. I can't imagine what I'm going to make for dinner tonight.

B. Well, there's that leftover meatloaf.