영어의 젠더중립 단수대명사 ‘They’의 Phi-자질과 분포

• 영문명: On the Phi-Features of English Ungendered Singular Pronoun THEY
• 발행기관: 현대문법학회
• 저자명: 홍성심(Sungshim Hong)
• 간행물 정보: 『현대문법연구』제112호, 69~85쪽, 전체 17쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2021.12.24

영문 초록

This paper aims to discuss the demise and shift of phi-features in English pronouns, in particular, THEY used as a 3rd person, singular, non-binary, and gender-neutral pronoun. It has been argued that pronouns have been considered as a hybrid category between functional and lexical (Zimman 2016, Gelderen 2017). As recent as Dec., 2019, a singular-they has attracted much attention from linguists, journalists, and grammarians in the world, for the obvious reasons that the English language officially selected the epicene-they (Balhorn 2004) as Word of the Year (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). The surge of the word THEY as a non-binary (ungendered) singular pronoun is extremely engaging in one hand, while the morphosyntactic consequences of its novel form seem quite murky and nebulous, especially from a heuristic perspective such as an EFL/ESL context. It is argued in this paper that pronouns, belonging to “a weaker category”, are more susceptible to their morphosyntactic changes whose recent appearance as a singular-THEY is the consequence of such weakness and instability in their feature matrix. The changes of the phi-features, particularly gender and number features in singular-THEY, are due to the language usage of the speakers’ level of participation in this grammatical change, as well as to the diversity of sociolinguistic environment.

목차

1. 서론

2. 단수 대명사-‘they’의 분포: 총칭성, 젠더중립성, 담화결속성

3. ESL/EFL관점에서의 단수-‘They’의 문제점

4. 결론

키워드

epicene-THEY phi-features feature matrix ungendered singular- THEY inner circle English countries