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Singular. they. Singular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs, and themselves (also themself and theirself ), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, in sentences such as: " Somebody left their umbrella in the office.
Personal pronoun. Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I ), second person (as you ), or third person (as he, she, it, they ). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and ...
Meaning. Although the everyday meaning of plural is "more than one", the grammatical term has a slightly different technical meaning. In the English system of grammatical number, singular means "one (or minus one)", and plural means "not singular". In other words, plural means not just "more than one" but also "less than one (except minus one)".
Singular they is a use of they as an epicene (gender-neutral) pronoun for a singular referent. [7] [8] In this usage, they follows plural agreement rules ( they are, not * they is ), but the semantic reference is singular. Unlike plural they, singular they is only used for people. For this reason, it could be considered to have personal gender.
In American English (AmE), collective nouns are almost always singular in construction: the committee was unable to agree. However, when a speaker wishes to emphasize that the individuals are acting separately, a plural pronoun may be employed with a singular or plural verb: the team takes their seats, rather than the team takes its seats.
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and ...
Latin document of 1249–50 issued by Henry III of England; he uses the phrase Mandamus vobis ("We command you"). The royal we, majestic plural ( pluralis majestatis ), or royal plural is the use of a plural pronoun (or corresponding plural-inflected verb forms) used by a single person who is a monarch or holds a high office to refer to themselves.
Dual ( abbreviated DU) is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities (objects or persons) identified by the noun or pronoun acting as a single unit or in unison. Verbs can also have dual agreement ...