
Theirself or Themself? - user_235711
http://cliffhays.weebly.com/1/post/2014/01/theirself-or-themself.html
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BjoernKW
If you absolutely have to use one of those it would have to be 'themself'.
'their' clearly is wrong in that place because it's possessive pronoun.

The reason why 'their' can be used in the same position in the sentence is
that it's used as a modifier to the object, i.e. the position in the sentence
is the same but the syntax tree is different.

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gr3yh47
"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the
gender is unknown

~~~
70forty
By what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or
grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this?

Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is
concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive
approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim
about what is and isn't standard usage.

~~~
gr3yh47
Saying I can only make a claim if I have done a certain study is somewhat
absurd, especially when you are, with that suggestion, claiming to be the
authority on how to determine what is correct.

~~~
normloman
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description)

^^^

Read it for your own good.

~~~
gr3yh47
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English)

^^^

Read it for your own good

~~~
normloman
And I'm sure if you asked editors at big publishing houses or english
teachers, most would tell you to prefer "themselves." Themself is a new
construction that hasn't caught on. Purveyors of "standard" English have to
err on the side of conservatism.

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70forty
"themself" follows the same pattern as "himself", "herself", "ourself", etc.
As a commenter pointed out, "them" is frequently used as a singular object
pronoun:

 _If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate
them._

corpus.byu.edu/coca/ returns 95,000 hits for "themselves" vs only 43 for
"theirselves".

~~~
gr3yh47
This is, however, formally incorrect.

"If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate
him."

would be formally correct

edit: and your corpus search correctly shows that the plural 'themselves' is
correct over 'theirselves' while having nothing to do with the discussion at
hand about the singular

~~~
Symmetry
What are you consulting to find that the correct replacement for 'them' in
formal writing is 'him' here? There isn't any College of the English Language
to make authoritative prescriptive statements, and the Chicago Manual of Style
at least has been against the use of 'him' here for several editions.

~~~
gr3yh47
I am not claiming that 'him' is a replacement for 'them'

'them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun.

edit: Again, 'them' is formally incorrect but informally acceptable in the
singular usage.

~~~
70forty
_' them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun._

Why? How do you know this?

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normloman
Writer here. The author is a programmer. An expert in formal languages. Formal
languages have to be logically consistent. Not English.

"Themselves" is correct, even if it's inconsistent, because it's what most
people say and understand. That's the point of a natural language. Not to be
neat and orderly, but to be understood.

~~~
gr3yh47
"Themselves" is correct because it is plural. What of the singular?

~~~
jonnathanson
"Them" is a plural word in the first place, so attempting to hybridize it with
the singular and form "themself" is incorrect and awkward. There is no
singular "them." In the case where one uses "them" to refer to a singular
subject of indeterminate gender, "them" doesn't actually become singular;
rather, it's simply being used as a free variable.

It's increasingly acceptable to use "them" to refer to a singular subject when
the gender is unknown. All but the strictest prescriptivists would now accept
that usage. But if a writer picks "them" over "him/her," he should use it with
internal, self-referential consistency.

~~~
gr3yh47
> There is no singular "them."

exactly why it is incorrect to use in the singular.

and this is the difference between formal and informal.

there are rules that are widely accepted (formal) and then there are actual
usages that are widely accepted (informal)

~~~
jonnathanson
This is the view commonly understood and immediately sensible. It's the view I
was taught and grew up with, and it's the view to which I still adhere when
writing (fwiw, I'm an adamant user of "himself" or "herself" for the
singular). In this view, "them" is acceptable on an informal, common-usage
basis.

That said, linguists in recent years have been working out _formal_ methods of
acceptance for "themselves" as a singular-referring pronoun when the gender of
the subject is unknown. See my previous comments about "them" as a free
variable; this is the formalist's argument for the acceptability of "them." It
is an argument advanced by some of the more influential logicians of the mid
to late 20th century, such as W.V.O. Quine. It's an argument based more in
symbolic logic than in traditional linguistics, but it's gained a fair amount
of currency in the high-nerddom of syntax. It's by no means an established or
generally accepted stance, however. The general, traditionally formal rule is
that "them" is always plural, and the construction "singular subject = them"
is a bit like saying "1 = >1," i.e., illogical.

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collyw
Does it really matter? That's the beauty of interacting with real people
rather than a computer. You can make small mistakes, and even bigger ones and
people will understand you. Hell I should know I live in Spain, and my Spanish
grammar is crap.

~~~
blueblob
People are working on getting computers to understand small mistakes as well.
There is more than one type of grammar in computer science. A generative
grammar which might be used for responses can be different than a grammar that
is used for recognition. The one used for recognition should understand
mistakes, but the one used for responses should not.

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merrua
"Themself" or "thine self" or "thyself" or "theirself" all sound ok. But
theirself looks incorrect written down. I would use Themself if I was writing.

