“Who wrote this rubbish” is already ambiguous from the start, since it can be a singular author, or multiple. I admit they/them didn’t help resolve that ambiguity, but it isn’t the cause.
I agree ‘who’ is ambiguous and ‘they/them’ tells you nothing further. If we had a ‘xhe’ or whatever, you could narrow it down to a single person, without having to get into gender needlessly. I don’t need to know/care about gender.
The ambiguity doesn’t lie in they, it lies in the way the writer constructed that sentence, as the person you responded to already stated.
The writer (and the person they are communicating with) knows the plurality of the “who”, an outside observer (us, the readers) aren’t privy to that information. Clarification on the part of the writer would provide that context. But the sentence isn’t written to be read to a 3rd party, but the other party (the person the writer is communicating with).
99.99% of people understand this intuitively, but this is the way you’d parse the understanding of that sentence.
And if you’ll note, in my second sentence, “they” is understood to be singular—the writer.
As a dyslexic I don’t parse sentences like others. I’ve also been programming since childhood, I’m sure it’s made that worse in some ways. I read unclear ambiguity when other don’t.
I’ve literally had it were multiple people are sure of the same interpretation but could not explain why. They didn’t even see ambiguity until I pointed it.
I’m not arguing everyone should have a gender. Only that I wish we had another thing to use. Well constructed writing can use them just fine, but there is a lot of writing not well constructed. Not least of which is mine! I’d rather be going the other way in language. I’d like language to be compilable. 😉
“Who wrote this rubbish” is already ambiguous from the start, since it can be a singular author, or multiple. I admit they/them didn’t help resolve that ambiguity, but it isn’t the cause.
I agree ‘who’ is ambiguous and ‘they/them’ tells you nothing further. If we had a ‘xhe’ or whatever, you could narrow it down to a single person, without having to get into gender needlessly. I don’t need to know/care about gender.
The ambiguity doesn’t lie in they, it lies in the way the writer constructed that sentence, as the person you responded to already stated.
The writer (and the person they are communicating with) knows the plurality of the “who”, an outside observer (us, the readers) aren’t privy to that information. Clarification on the part of the writer would provide that context. But the sentence isn’t written to be read to a 3rd party, but the other party (the person the writer is communicating with).
99.99% of people understand this intuitively, but this is the way you’d parse the understanding of that sentence.
And if you’ll note, in my second sentence, “they” is understood to be singular—the writer.
As a dyslexic I don’t parse sentences like others. I’ve also been programming since childhood, I’m sure it’s made that worse in some ways. I read unclear ambiguity when other don’t.
I’ve literally had it were multiple people are sure of the same interpretation but could not explain why. They didn’t even see ambiguity until I pointed it.
I’m not arguing everyone should have a gender. Only that I wish we had another thing to use. Well constructed writing can use them just fine, but there is a lot of writing not well constructed. Not least of which is mine! I’d rather be going the other way in language. I’d like language to be compilable. 😉