I was recently in a discussion about singular "they". I have plenty of thoughts on the topic that I might turn into a separate post, but the discussion prompted me to look for research that had been done on questions such as:
- What portion of people treat singular "they" as grammatical?
- Are people of certain ages (e.g. younger) more likely to treat it as grammatical?
In the process of looking for answers to these questions, I found Kirby Conrod's PhD thesis on the topic, and discovered that there's way more going on with singular "they", and pronouns in general, than I had previously realized. I also realized that I could not reliably remember whether my personal idiolect's grammar had changed with regards to pronoun usage in the last 5, 10, or 20 years. As such, I thought it would be interesting to go through several of the examples in the literature and list whether they are grammatical for me. It will be interesting to see whether any of them change some number of years in the future.
I'm not going to write anything on the answers to the above questions in this post. If they interest you, I recommend reading Conrod's thesis that explores it in depth.
A very quick primer on notation
In texts about linguistics, example sentences are given, and it is important to be able to write out both grammatically correct and grammatically incorrect sentences. A grammatically correct example typically does not carry any additional marking, but here I'll be explicitly adding a check mark (✓) for sentences that I accept.
Sentences with incorrect grammar are marked with an asterisk (*). Sentences that are possibly grammatical but dispreferred are marked with a question mark (?). When I give an example with a question mark, I will try to also give a rephrasing that I believe I would be more likely to say. For sentences that some people will accept and some will reject, the research often uses a percent sign (%). Since I'm focusing on my personal idiolect, I won't use that here, but I expect that many readers will disagree with my judgments on some of the examples.
Singular they
Getting this topic out of the way first. In a 2017 paper, Bjorkman points out that "singular they" doesn't refer to a single usage pattern, but rather several different ones, and some English speakers will accept some usages while not accepting all of them.
Most commonly accepted is what's known as an epicene usage of "they", and I accept these usages as grammatical.
✓Everyone should know their own phone number.
When people say that singular they is hundreds of years old, it's usually backed up by an epicene example.
Next is the use of "they" to refer to a definite person whose gender is known (and, for the purposes of this example, that person doesn't use "they" as a non-binary pronoun), but is referred to in a non-gendered way. This usage is also grammatical for me.
✓Our eldest child broke their leg.
Finally, there is the use of "they" to refer to a specific person that was named (again, assuming said person does not use non-binary "they"), or is referred to by a gender-specific noun.
?Janet said they cancelled the exam.
?My sister broke their leg.
Before I started writing this post, I thought I would judge these sentences as grammatical. Upon reading them again, I believe if I were producing the sentences myself, I would use gendered pronouns for both: "Janet said she cancelled the exam." and "My sister broke her leg." Thus, I've judged them as dispreferred here. In the case of a name that does not suggest a particular gender, I might use "they". This also includes cases where the person is referred to by their family name and without a gendered title.
✓Did Chris say that they would be late?
Conrod also briefly mentions a similar usage where "they" is variable, but with gender-specific semantics:
?Every male professor needs to be respectful to their TAs.
Similar to the above examples, this is somewhere between invalid and dispreferred for me. I believe I would say "Every male professor needs to be respectful to his TAs." instead.
Overall, this makes me what Bjorkman called an "innovative they user". Of course, it might be significantly less innovative in 2025 than it was in 2017.
Quality, Quantity, and Relation
In chapter 4 of their thesis, Conrod discusses pronoun choice for speakers for whom definite singular they is grammatical. Those speakers will regularly be producing sentences where either a gender specific pronoun (he/she/etc) or a gender non-specific (they) pronoun could be used, and Conrod lists three maxims that guide this choice.
- Quantity - Give as much information as the speaker knows.
- Quality - Don't give information that the speaker is not sure about.
- Relation - Give information that is relevant to the discussion.
These maxims frequently conflict, and different speakers may prioritize them differently. For example, one speaker might value Relation over Quantity, and use "they" to refer to someone whose gender they know if they feel the gender is not relevant for the conversation. On the other hand, a different speaker might value Quantity over Relation, and use gendered pronouns in the same situation.
I am going to set aside the ranking of Quality for my speech for now. I believe that there have been cases that I've assigned an assumed gender to an anonymous person when it was unwarranted, but I also believe that I don't do it particularly frequently. It's hard to judge purely via introspection.
On the question of Quantity versus Relation, I believe I clearly rank Quantity above Relation. That is to say, I would prefer to say:
My friend visited her parents over the weekend.
over
My friend visited their parents over the weekend.
if I have a particular female friend in mind, even if the fact that she's female is not relevant. Interestingly, this example also shows the opposite ranking in a different aspect of the sentence: I wouldn't include the friend's name if I didn't feel it was relevant (e.g. if I didn't think said friend would be a continued topic of discussion).
Depronominalization
Conrod mentions a phenomenon of using a pronoun preceded by a determiner, which they call depronominalization. Surprisingly, these are marked as acceptable without further comment in Conrod's thesis, but they are all ungrammatical to me. I'm not sure whether these judgments were assigned by Conrod based on their own idiolect, or if there is evidence that a wider section of speakers use this construction.
*I was looking for the other he.
In contrast, if the pronoun is a name instead, I am perfectly happy to use this construction.
✓I was looking for the other Chris.
A 2009 paper by Cowper and Hall gives several examples, which I'll present here out-of-order and grouped based on my judgments. All of them are listed as grammatical in the paper.
?Is that a he or a she? Neither; it's an it.
This example is the closest to being acceptable to me. I think I've heard the construction "is a he" enough times as meaning "is appropriately referred to as 'he'" that it sounds not entirely wrong to me, but I would primarily use a different phrasing: "Is that a male or a female? It's neither." (Note: This sentence would refer to a non-human. For humans, the construction would be "Are they male or female?") I can't think of a parallel construction to "it's an it", but the answer using "it" as a pronoun would implicitly indicate that "it" is the appropriate pronoun.
*"Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy" (William Shakespear, _Twelfth Night I.v.241-243).
This example is ungrammatical to me. I would use the construction "the cruell'st woman alive". I can understand what is being said here, likely because of the simplicity of being able to mentally substitute out "she" with a word meaning roughly "a person who can be appropriately referred to by 'she'".
*The theys are not individual hes and shes with votes (Jenkins 1973).
Like the previous example, this is ungrammatical to me. However, unlike the previous example, I struggle to even understand what is being said here to be able to rephrase it.
*"You say to me-wards, your affection's strong; Pray love me little, so you love me long" (Robert Herrick, "Love me little, love me long").
I can't say I've seen the construction "me-wards" before. I am guessing here that it means "in my direction", trying to be slightly different from "say to me".
✓"'Roses are worth more dried than alive' - such a you thing to say." (The Tragically Hip, "Impossibilium").
?It just looked absolutely us somehow.
"Such a you thing to say" is a construction that I might use, with the meaning of "That is a thing to say that features that would strongly suggest to me that the speaker is you." In the second example, trying to use "us" with a similar meaning is more difficult because of the number mismatch. There are no qualities that could strongly suggest that "it" is "us", because the use of "it" presupposes that the referent is singular, while "us" would require a plural referent.
*a she-wolf
*a he-man
*the Me-Decade, the We-Decade
I've marked these as ungrammatical because even if I did use these constructions, I do not believe it would be accurately described as a pronoun usage. Specifically, I believe I would only use these phrases if they were lexical items or, in other words, names for concepts that happen to have a pronoun as part of its etymology.
For example, I might expect that "the Me-Decade" would be a name given to a decade where there was a popular philosphical movement that put more emphasis on one's self, but to my knowledge no such decade exists (Actually, after writing that, on a whim I decided to do a search and it appears there is such a term referring to the 1970s). Upon some more reflection as I'm writing now, I wonder if the Cowper and Hall gave this example with the intention for "Me-Decade" to mean "The decade in which I was born", but that would not be an interpretation that I give to the phrase.
✓Mini-Me
This example differs from the previous three in where the pronoun appears. I would happily use this construction to mean "something that strongly resembles a smaller version of me."
Pronouns as pseudo-articles
In the same Cowper-Hall paper, they give these examples with judgments that match mine.
✓You linguists are an eccentric lot.
✓They won't have an easy time convincing us linguists.
*They linguists are an eccentric lot.
*They won't have an easy time convincing him linguist.
However, when I read these examples, I immediately reacted that a slight rephrasing of the third one is grammatical for me:
✓Them linguists are an eccentric lot.
I think this example is very strange! Later in the section, Cowper and Hall do mark that "them linguists" is accepted by part of the population as an accusative, but in the example I've given here, the accusative pronoun is used in a phrase that's in a position where we would expect the nominative case.
This strangeness also carries over to the plural first person pronouns. I, as I suspect is common, accept "we linguists" as a nominative:
✓We linguists are an eccentric lot.
However, I also accept "us linguists" in the same position, and maybe would even prefer that construction!
✓Us linguists are an eccentric lot.
I suspect that I'm in a tiny minority on this one.
In line with the judgments given by Cowper and Hall, all of the attempts at a singular construction are ungrammatical for me.
*I linguist am an eccentric person.
*You linguist are an eccentric person.
*(He/Him/She/Her) linguist is an eccentric person.
Closing
I found this an interesting exercise. I came across both constructions that I accept that typically aren't accepted, and constructions that I don't accept that typically are (or, at least were presented as uncontroversially accepted). It's also surprisingly difficult to read a sentence and apply a grammatical judgment, especially when the meaning is clear even if the sentence is ungrammatical.