InModern English,they is athird-personpronoun relating to agrammatical subject.
InStandard Modern English,they has five distinct wordforms:[1]
Old English had a single third-person pronounhē, which had both singular and plural forms, andthey wasn't among them. In or about the start of the 13th century,they was imported from aScandinavian source (Old Norseþeir,Old Danish,Old Swedishþer,þair), in which it was amasculinepluraldemonstrative pronoun. It comes fromProto-Germanic *thai, nominative plural pronoun, fromPIE *to-, demonstrative pronoun.[4] According toThe Cambridge History of the English Language:[5]
ByChaucer's time theth- form has been adopted in London for the subject case only, whereas the oblique cases remain in their native form (hem,here <OEheom,heora). At the same period (and indeed before),Scots texts, such as Barbour's Bruce, have theth- form in all cases.
The development inMiddle English is shown in the following table. At the final stage, it had reached its modern form.
| I | II | III | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | þei | þei | þei |
| Oblique | hem | hem | hem ~þem |
| Genitive | her[e] | her[e] ~þeir | þeir |
Singularthey is a use ofthey as anepicene (gender-neutral) pronoun for a singularreferent.[7][8] In this usage,they follows plural agreement rules (they are, not *they is), but thesemanticreference is singular. Unlike pluralthey, singularthey is only used forpeople. For this reason, it could be considered to have personalgender. Some people refuse to use the epicene pronounthey when referring to individuals on the basis that it is primarily a plural pronoun instead of a singular pronoun.[9][10][11] However, the online edition of theOxford English Dictionary records usage ofthey "referring to an individual generically or indefinitely", with examples dating froma1405–2019.[12]
In December 2019,Merriam-Webster chose singularthey 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 consequencethey has been used for this purpose for over 600 years."[13]
They can appear as asubject,object,determiner orpredicative complement.[1] The reflexive form also appears as anadjunct.
Pronouns rarely takedependents, but it is possible forthey to have many of the same kind of dependents as othernoun phrases.
Pluralthey'sreferents can be anything, including persons, as long as it does not include the speaker (which would requirewe) or the addressee(s) (which would requireyou). Singularthey can only refer to individual persons. Until the end of the 20th century, this was limited to those whosegender is unknown (e.g., "Someone's here. I wonder whatthey want"; "That person over there seems to be wavingtheir hands at us.").[14]
The pronounthey can also be used to refer to an unspecified group of people[15], as in "In Japanthey drive on the left", or "They are 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."
