“They” as a gender-unspecified singular pronoun: Eye tracking reveals a processing cost
“They” as a gender-unspecified singular pronoun: Eye tracking reveals a processing cost
复制标题
“他们”作为未指定性别的单数代词：眼动追踪揭示了处理成本
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2007
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
R. Filik
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Sanford;R. Filik
复数代词they和them用来指性别未知的个体，当不希望随机分配性别时。尽管这种用法看起来很贴切，但根据代词寻求性别和数字匹配的先行词的理论，“单数they/them”应该会引起处理问题。使用眼动追踪法，我们调查了使用单数they/them是否会产生处理成本。他们/他们显然要为数字不兼容付出代价。因此，尽管单数they/them在当前的用法中，they/them似乎不能立即容忍复数先行词，尽管这可能很快就会被接受。数据与代词解析的搜索说明一致，并保留了they/them表示复数的语义。
The plural pronouns they and them are used to refer to individuals with unknown gender and when a random allocation of gender is undesirable. Despite this apparently felicitous usage, “singular they/them” should raise processing problems under the theory that pronouns seek gender- and number-matched antecedents. Using eye-tracking, we investigated whether there was any processing cost associated with using singular they/them. There was a clear cost of number incompatibility for they/them. Thus, although singular they/them is in current usage, it does not appear that they/them is immediately tolerant of a plural antecedent, though such may be rapidly accommodated. The data are consistent with the search account of pronoun resolution and preserve the semantics of they/them as denoting plurality.