In Modern English, they is a third-person personal pronoun relating to a grammatical subject.
Morphology
In
Standard English Modern English,
they has five distinct word forms:
-
they: the Nominative case (subjective) form
-
them: the Accusative case (objective, called the 'Oblique case'.
-
their: the dependent Genitive case (possessive) form
-
theirs: independent Genitive case form
-
themselves: prototypical reflexive form
-
themself: derivative reflexive form (nonstandard; now chiefly used instead of "himself or herself" as a reflexive epicenity for they in pronominal reference to a singular referent)
History
Old English had a single third-person pronoun hē, which had both singular and plural forms, and
they wasn't among them. In or about the start of the 13th century,
they was imported from a
Scandinavia source (
Old Norse þeir, Old Danish,
Old Swedish þer, þair), in which it was a masculine
plural demonstrative pronoun. It comes from Proto-Germanic *
thai, nominative plural pronoun, from PIE *
to-, demonstrative pronoun.
According to
The Cambridge History of the English Language:
The development in Middle English is shown in the following table. At the final stage, it had reached its modern form.
+Three stages of they in Middle English[Blake (1992), p. 121]
!
!I
!II
!III |
|
|
|
Singular they
singular they is a use of
they as an
Epicenity (gender-neutral) pronoun for a singular
referent.
In this usage,
they follows plural agreement rules (
they are, not *
they is), but the
Semantics reference is singular. Unlike plural
they, singular
they is only used for
Person. For this reason, it could be considered to have personal gender. Some people refuse to use the epicene pronoun
they when referring to individuals on the basis that it is primarily a plural pronoun instead of a singular pronoun.
However, the online edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary records usage of
they "referring to an individual generically or indefinitely", with examples dating to 2008–2009.
Word of the year
In December 2019,
Merriam-Webster chose singular
they as word of the year. The word was chosen because "English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence
they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years."
Syntax
Functions
They can appear as a subject, object,
determiner or predicative complement.
The reflexive form also appears as an adjunct.
-
Subject: " They're there"; " them being there"; " their being there".
-
Object: "I saw them"; "I directed her to them"; "They connect to themselves."
-
Predicative complement: "In our attempt to fight evil, we have become them"; "They eventually felt they had become themselves."
-
Dependent determiner: "I touched their car"; " them folks are helpful" (non-standard).
-
Independent determiner: "This is theirs."
-
Adjunct: "They did it themselves."
Dependents
Pronouns rarely take dependents, but it is possible for
they to have many of the same kind of dependents as other
.
-
Relative clause modifier: "they who arrive late".
-
Determiner: "Sometimes, when you think, 'I will show them', the 'them' you end up showing is yourself."
-
Adjective phrase modifier: "the real them".
-
Adverbial phrase external modifier: " not even them".
Semantics
Plural
they's
can be anything, including persons, as long as it does not include the speaker (which would require
we) or the addressee(s) (which would require
you). Singular
they can only refer to individual persons. Until the end of the 20th century, this was limited to those whose
gender is unknown (e.g., "Someone's here. I wonder what
they want"; "That person over there seems to be waving
their hands at us.").
Generic
The pronoun
they can also be used to refer to an unspecified group of people, as in "In Japan
they drive on the left", or "
They're putting in a new restaurant across the street." It often refers to the authorities, or to some perceived powerful group, sometimes sinister: "
They don't want the public to know the whole truth."
See also
