A CORPUS-BASED DIACHRONIC STUDY OF EPICENE PRONOUNS IN ENGLISH: A CASE OF ANAPHORA TO COMPOUND INDEFINITE PRONOUNS

Abstract

From old English to modern English, the gender category has shifted from a grammatical system to a natural one, with only pronouns retaining gender marking. He and they used as epicene pronouns represent a common phenomenon of gender disagreement. This study examines epicene pronoun usage with anaphors restricted to possessives (his, their) and antecedents to compound indefinite pronouns (someone, somebody), considering writing form, prefix and suffix semantics, and frequency. Results show that their is increasingly used as the epicene pronoun while his declines, a trend influenced by social factors as well as the semantics and frequency of antecedents. The use of plural their in anaphoric reference to singular indefinite pronouns can be viewed as number variation, and its replacement of his as a change in both gender and number category. Among candidates for the gender-neutral function, their proves the most promising based on diachronic evidence.