“They” as a gender-unspecified singular pronoun: Eye tracking reveals a processing cost

Abstract

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.

This work was supported by EPSRC Grant GR/S76434/01 and AHRC Grant B/RG/AN8799/APN19525. Materials available from the authors on request.

Notes

¹ An analysis of skipped trials showed only one systematic effect. In Region 1, there was a main effect of pronoun (F ₁ = 4.93, p <.05; F ₂ = 4.95, p <.05), with singular pronouns being skipped more often (at.68 of trials on average) than plural pronouns (at.40 of trials on average). This numerically small effect is attributable to differences in lengths of these pronouns.