"Harper presented to the leadership committee and they were confused."
Is 'they' referring to Harper or the leadership committee?
Is 'they' referring to Harper or the leadership committee?
What if "Harper" were the name of a company? Rejecting singular "they" wouldn't save you then. I would propose that whatever remedy you would suggest for the "Harper Inc." case, you go ahead and apply to this one as well.
Replacing "he" and "she" with "they" both removes information and introduces an ambiguity in number.
downvoter: am I wrong?
Unlike e.g. German, English doesn't have a gender neutral singular pronoun to use. The only one that fits naturally in most peoples' conversation (and doesn't sound like something uttered by a science fiction-inspired cult) is "singular they".
What German pronoun are you talking about?
You: points out I'm wrong
Me: concedes I'm mistaken
You: continues to question me
Why?
Which one is 'he' referring to? Exact same ambiguity.
"Harper presented to James and he was confused." vs "Harper presented to James and they were confused."
"Harper presented to Sam and he was confused." vs "Harper presented to Sam and they were confused."
"Harper presented to Sam and she was confused." vs "Harper presented to Sam and they were confused."
"Harper presented to the board and they were confused." vs "Harper presented to the board and they were confused."
I'm all for calling people what they want but to assume that it doesn't add context in a lot of situations isn't accurate either.
Better practice (imo) would be to use peoples names more.
"Harper presented to Jessica and Jessica was confused."
"Harper presented to James and James was confused."
"Harper presented to Sam and Sam was confused."
"Harper presented to Sam and Harper was confused."
"Harper presented to the board and the board was confused."
"Harper presented to Jessica and she was confused."
"Harper presented to James and she was confused."
"Harper presented to Sam and she was confused."
"Harper presented to Sam and he was confused."
"Harper presented to the board and they were confused."
I mean, no chance in hell making a switch like that by fiat. It just sounds so wrong. But if I were greenfielding a language, I think that would be a nice feature.
English has subject vs object distinctions in pronouns already, but all of your examples are subject and not object uses.
You seem to want a distinction between whether the referent was a subject or object in the preceding clause, but in all your examples the only reason to use a pronoun is to refer to the indirect object, since to refer to the subject you would render the sentence exactly as your example except dropping the pronoun entirely, so it doesn't seem to be a necessary or useful distinction, at least in the examples presented.
Yes.
> ...to refer to the subject you would render the sentence exactly as your example except dropping the pronoun entirely.
Oof. Of course. I seem to forget how to speak when I'm thinking too much about the rules.
It's reasonable to assume that Jessica is 'she' and that James is a 'he'.
It's reasonable to assume the board is 'they'.
We don't need to contort language to accommodate situations that hardly happen in a lifetime.
Sam, Jamie - sure. But Jessica, James, we know.
Someone who refers to themselves as 'Jessica' but also identifies as male is making a choice to contradict social conventions, which is perfectly fine and entirely their (pun intended?) right, but it's not our responsibility to have to keep up.
If in context we know gender, then cool, if not, Jessica will be confused for a female.
If "they" can mean either singular or plural, then it doesn't help to resolve the ambiguity at all.