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Compiled from these places: | Compiled from these places: | ||
- | * Denis Baron, "The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed," | + | * Denis Baron, "The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed," |
* Ann Bodine, " | * Ann Bodine, " | ||
* Peter H. Stauffer, "A Solution to the Gender-Neutral Pronoun Problem," | * Peter H. Stauffer, "A Solution to the Gender-Neutral Pronoun Problem," | ||
- | * Peter H. Stauffer, "A Solution to the Gender-Neutral Pronoun Problem," | ||
- | For more info on singular " | ||
- | posted | + | ==== The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed==== |
+ | |||
+ | by Dennis Baron. Professor of English and Linguistics, | ||
+ | * ca. 1850 ne, nis, nim; hiser NY Commercial Advertiser, 7 August 1884, 3. | ||
+ | * 1868 en Cited by Richard Grant White. The Galaxy, August, 241-44. | ||
+ | * 1884 thon, thons Charles Crozat Converse. The Critic, 2 August, 55. | ||
+ | * hi, hes, hem Francis H. Williams. The Critic, 16 August, 79-80. | ||
+ | * le, lis, lim (from the French); unus; talis Edgar Alfred Stevens. The Current, 30 August, 294. | ||
+ | * hiser, himer (hyser, hymer) Charles P. Sherman. The Literary World, 6 September, 294. | ||
+ | * ip, ips Emma Carleton. The Current, 20 September, 186. | ||
+ | * 1888 ir, iro, im (sg.); tha, thar, them (pl.) Elias Molee, Plea for an American Language (Chicago: John Anderson), 200-01. | ||
+ | * 1889 ons (from one) C.R.B. Writer 3: 231 | ||
+ | * 1890 e (from he), es, em (from them) James Rogers of Crestview, Florida. Writer 4: 12-13 | ||
+ | * 1891 hizer Forrest Morgan. Writer 5: 260-62. | ||
+ | * ith George Winslow Pierce. The Life-Romance of an Algebraist (Boston: J.G. Cupples), 35. | ||
+ | * 1912 he’er, him’er, his’er, his’er’s Ella Flagg Young. Chicago Tribune, 7 January, 1:7. | ||
+ | * 1914 hie, hiez, hie (phonetic spellings of he, hes, he) Language reformer Mont Follick, in The Influence of English (London: Williams & Norgate, 1934), pp. 198-99, prefers | ||
+ | * 1927 ha, hez, hem; on The Forum 77: 265-68 Attributed | ||
+ | * hesh (heesh), hizzer, himmer; on Fred Newton Scott (Scott mentions earlier creation of on). The Forum 77: 754; Mencken adds, "In 1934 James F. Morton, of the Paterson (N.J.) Museum, proposed to change hesh to heesh and to restore hiser and himer" (American Language Supp. 2, 1948, 370). | ||
+ | * ca. 1930 thir Sir John Adams; cited by Philip Howard, New Words for Old (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1977), 95. | ||
+ | * 1934 she, shis, shim (gender-specific parallel to he, his, him) Cited by Phillip B. Ballard, Thought and Language (London: Univ. of London Press), 7-8. | ||
+ | * 1935 himorher; hes (pron. [his]), hir (pron. [hir]), hem; his’n, her’n "The Post Impressionist." | ||
+ | * 1938 se, sim, sis Gregory Hynes, " | ||
+ | * ca. 1940 heesh A. A. Milne; cited by Maxwell Nurnberg, What’s the Good Word? A New Way to Better English (N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, 1942, 88-90). | ||
+ | * 1945 hse Buwei Yang Chao, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese (N.Y.: Vintage, Random House, 3rd ed., 1963, rpt. 1972), xxiv. | ||
+ | * 1969 kin Replaces all pronouns in the language of the people of Ata. Dorothy Bryant, The Comforter, rpt. 1971, The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You (N.Y.: Random House/Moon Books), p. 51. | ||
+ | * 1970 she (contains he), heris, herim Dana Densmore, " | ||
+ | * co (from IE *ko), cos Mary Orovan, Humanizing English (N.Y.: the author). | ||
+ | * ve, vis, ver Varda (Murrell) One. Everywoman, 8 May, 2. | ||
+ | * 1971 ta, ta-men (pl.); a borrowing from Mandarin Chinese. Leslie E. Blumenson, New York Times, 30 December. | ||
+ | * 1972 tey, term, tem; him/herself Casey Miller and Kate Swift, "What about New Human Pronouns?" | ||
+ | * fm Paul Kay, Newsletter of the American Anthropological Association 13 (April): 3. | ||
+ | * it; z Abigail Cringle of Edgerton, Maryland, rejects epicene it, prefers z. Washington Post, May 2, Sec. A, 19. | ||
+ | * shis, shim, shims, shimself Robert B. Kaplan, Newsletter of the American Anthropological Association 13 (June): 4. | ||
+ | * ze (from Ger. sie), zim, zees, zeeself; per (from person), pers Steven Polgar of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, proposes the ze paradigm; John Clark offers per. Newsletter of the American Anthropological Association 13 (September): | ||
+ | * 1973 na, nan, naself June Arnold, The Cook and the Carpenter (Plainfield, | ||
+ | * it; s/he Norma Wilson et al., editors, "A Woman’s New World Dictionary," | ||
+ | * s/he; him/er; his-or-her Cited and rejected by Gordon Wood, "The Forewho—Neither a He, a She, nor an It," American Speech 48: 158-59. | ||
+ | * shem; herm Quidnunc, " | ||
+ | * se (pron. [si]), ser (pron. [sir]), sim (pron. [sim]), simself William Cowan, of the Department of Linguistics, | ||
+ | * j/e, m/a, m/e, m/es, m/oi; jee, jeue Monique Wittig employs the slashed pronouns as feminines, and cites the latter two which employ the more traditional feminine e; Le corps lesbien (Paris: Editions de Minuit); The Lesbian Body, trans. David LeVay (London: Peter Owen, 1975). | ||
+ | * heesh, heesh’s, heeshself Poul Anderson, The Day of Their Return. New York: Nelson Doubleday/ | ||
+ | * 1974 ne, nis, ner Mildred Fenner attributes this to Fred Wilhelms. Today’s Education 4: 110. | ||
+ | * she (includes he) Gena Corea, " | ||
+ | * en, es, ar David H. Stern of Pasadena, California, The Los Angeles Times, 19 January, Sec. 2, p. 4. | ||
+ | * hisorher; herorhis; ve, vis, vim Cited by Amanda Smith, Washington Post, 11 April, Sec.A, 29. | ||
+ | * shem, hem, hes Paul L. Silverman of Rockville, Maryland, Washington Post, 17 December, Sec. A, 17. | ||
+ | * 1975 hir, herim (facetious) Milton Mayer, "On the Siblinghood of Persons," | ||
+ | * hesh, himer, hiser, hermself Jan Verley Archer, "Use New Pronouns," | ||
+ | * se (pron. [si]) H. R. Lee of Alexandria, Virginia, Forbes 116 (15 August): 86. | ||
+ | * ey, eir, em; uh Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, Chicago Tribune, 23 August, Sec. 1, p. 12. | ||
+ | * h’orsh’it (facetious blend of he, or, she,and it) Joel Weiss of Northbrook, Illinois, Forbes 116 (15 September): 12. | ||
+ | * 1976 ho, hom, hos, homself (from Lat. homo, ‘man,’ and prefix homo-, ‘the same, equal, like’) Donald K. Darnell, in Donald K. Darnell and Wayne Brockriede, Persons Communicating (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall), | ||
+ | * he or she; to be written as (s)he Elizabeth Lane Beardsley, " | ||
+ | * she, herm, hs (facetious; pron. " | ||
+ | * it Millicent Rutherford, "One Man in Two Is a Woman," | ||
+ | * ca. 1977 po, xe, jhe Cited as recent and ephemeral by Casey Miller and Kate Swift, Words and Women: New Language in New Times (Rpt., N.Y.: Anchor Press, 130). Paul Dickson, Words (1982), p. 113, attributes jhe, pronounced " | ||
+ | * E, E’s, Em; one E was created by psychologist Donald G. MacKay of the University of California at Los Angeles. | ||
+ | * 1977 e, ris, rim Werner Low, Washington Post, 20 February, Sec. C, 6. | ||
+ | * sheme, shis, shem; heshe, hisher, himmer Thomas H. Middleton, " | ||
+ | * em, ems Jeffrey J. Smith (using pseudonym TINTAJL jefry) Em Institute Newsletter (June). | ||
+ | * 1978 ae Cited by Cheris Kramer(ae), Barrie Thorne, and Nancy Henley, " | ||
+ | * hir Ray A. Killian, Managers Must Lead! (AMACOM) press release; cited in "The Epicene Pronoun Yet Again," | ||
+ | * hesh, hizer, hirm; sheehy; sap (from homo sapiens) Tom Wicker, "More About He/She and Thon," New York Times, 14 May, Sec. 4, p. 19. Hesh etc. proposed by Prof. Robert Longwell of the University of Northern Colorado; sheehy by David Kraus of Bell Harbor, N.Y.; sap (facetiously) by Dr. Lawrence S. Ross, of Huntington, N.Y.; Wicker adds that several readers offered blends of he, she, and it. | ||
+ | * heesh, hiser(s), herm, hermself Leonora A. Timm, "Not Mere Tongue in Cheek: The Case for a Common Gender Pronoun in English," | ||
+ | * e, im, ir(s) Reviving the Old English letter called thorn, to be used for the unvoiced th sound. | ||
+ | * 1979 one Lillian E. Carleton, "An Epicene Suggestion," | ||
+ | * et, ets, etself Aline Hoffman of Sarnia, Ontario; cited by William Sherk, Brave New Words (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1979). | ||
+ | * hir, hires, hirem, hirself Jerome Ch’en, Professor of History at York University, New York Times, 6 January, 18. | ||
+ | * shey, sheir, sheirs; hey, heir, heirs Paul Encimer favors the first over the second paradigm. The Peacemaker 32 (February): 2-3. | ||
+ | * 1980 it Herman Arthur, "To Err Is Huperson; to Forgive, Divine," | ||
+ | * 1981 heshe, hes, hem Ronald C. Corbyn, " | ||
+ | * 1982 shey, shem, sheir Mauritz Johnson; cited by William Safire, What’s the Good Word? (N.Y.: Times Books), 30. | ||
+ | * E, Ir Subject and possessive forms, created by the Broward County, Florida, public schools; cited by Paul Dickson in Words (N. Y.: Delacorte), 113. | ||
+ | * 1984 hiser McClain B. Smith, Ann Arbor News, 20 January, Sec. A, 6. | ||
+ | * hes Ernie Permentier, Ms. (May): 22. | ||
+ | * hann Steven Schaufele of the Univ. of Illinois linguistics department takes this from Old Norse, already the source of some English pronouns; analogous to Finnish han. Colorless Green Newsflashes 4 (9 November), 3. | ||
+ | * 1985 herm Jenny Cheshire traces this to the magazine Lysistrata. "A Question of Masculine Bias," Today’s English 1: 26. | ||
+ | * a, un, a’s Although she prefers singular they, Ursula K. Le Guin used this paradigm, based on British dialect, in a 1985 screenplay for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969); the novel itself uses he/his/him. "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" (1976, revised, 1987), in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (New York: Grove Press, 1989), p. 15. | ||
+ | * 1988 han, hans A. M. Stratford, of Norfolk, England, creates this form to resemble other British initials (HM, HRH, HMS, HE, HMSO), English Today 14:5-6. | ||
+ | * e, e’s (from the common letter in he and she) Eugene Wine, of Miami-Dade Community College, also notes that I and you "have already been reduced to a single vowel sound." | ||
+ | * 1989 ala, alum, alis Michael Knab, of Goodwin, Knab and Co., Chicago, derives these from Lat. al, ‘other’ and feels they resemble the Hawaiian sex-neutral pronouns oia, ia. Press release and personal communication. | ||
+ | * e, e’s, emself, em Victor J. Stone, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana. In the Chicago Bar Association’s CBA Record 3 (July/ | ||
+ | * 1991 de/deis; den/din Richard Strand, Keith Roberson, Dan Fisher, BLAST (Computer) Support Office, Dept. of Mechanical Englineering, | ||
+ | * 1992 se, hir According to John Cowan (email communication) this paradigm is regularly used on the electronic newsgroup alt.sex.bondage. | ||
+ | * E, e, es, eself Qing Guo proposed this on the computer network newsgroup alt.usage.english; | ||
+ | * ghach Marc Okrand uses this epicene pronoun in the Klingon language which he created for the Star Trek series. There are no common gender pronouns in Vulcan. | ||
+ | * The following appear in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed. Tom McArthur (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press), s.v. generic pronoun: | ||
+ | * han Business writer Audrie Stratford, Ling’s Lynn, England. | ||
+ | * hey Ronald Gill, of Derby, England. | ||
+ | * mef George Wardell, Reading, England. | ||
+ | * ws, wself Dr. John B, Sykes, editor, Concise Oxford Dictionary, 7th ed. | ||
+ | * ze, zon Don Manley, Oxford, England. | ||
+ | Earlier versions of this list appeared in my article, "The Epicene Pronoun: The Word That Failed" | ||