Re: [s-d] Motion 161 (was: Prop 161)

[The Voice <voiceofnomic@xxxxxxxxx>]

I feel like the operating idea here is that the pronoun 'eir' is
inappropriate, because words have no gender (in the non-grammatical
sense).  The point of the Spivak pronouns is to avoid gender confusion
when speaking to or about people whose genders are technically
unknowable to you (like online), and mainly to avoid cumbersome
constructions like he/she, his/hers, and so forth.  So in this case,
'their' is clearly appropriate, because one would not want to say,
"Words having only prefix and/or suffix as [his/her] part of speech,"
as that doesn't make any sense.

On 7/18/05, Peter Cooper Jr. <pete+bnomic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> flutesultan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> > Spivak is new to me.
> 
> I hadn't seen it before B Nomic either, nor have I really seen it
> outside of the game.
> 
> > My Webster's lists first:
> > "of or relating to them or themselves esp. as possessors,
> > agents or objects of an action."
> > And secondly in the singular:
> > "his or hers"
> > I know Yahoo is the dictionary of choice,
> 
> Well, I picked that fairly arbitrarily when starting to define the
> game of Tiles, since we needed to have *some* objective definition of
> what is and isn't an English word. Yahoo's dictionary seemed as good a
> choice as any.
> 
> > but I'm going to OBJECT on general principles.
> > THEIR connotes plurality to me,
> > and so the Spivak eir seems appropriate.
> 
> The bullet involved is "Words having only prefix and/or suffix as eir
> part of speech". We're talking about all such words, plural, so a
> plural possessive seemed more appropriate.
> 
> 
> And I changed the subject to try to avoid confusion. Motion 161 is a
> Referendum, not a Proposal. I used the proposal system on the web site
> to submit it since the introduction of Motions for all Game-changing
> Objects was supposed to unify everything so that we could track them
> all the same. However, the web site scripts still say "Proposal"
> everywhere. Wonko, would it be difficult to change all those to say
> "Motion"?
> 
> --
> Peter C.
> "The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
> who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature."
>                 -- Benjamin Franklin.
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-- 
.o0(The Voice)
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