Maybe not the best examples, but people do tend to think of the usage as something new, while it's been around forever.
I wouldn't say "they both" is very number-ambiguous, though sure you can always find ambiguous examples, but then language is full of ambiguity and humans still seem to manage fine.
> Maybe not the best examples, but people do tend to think of the usage as something new, while it's been around forever.
To bad then that I never said anything about history, but just widespread adoption. So there is not much need to condescendingly point out Shakespeare and Austen, when they are just tangentially related.
> I don't have much faith in broad adoption if the term can't seem to penetrate usage in writing outside of contexts where people are actively discussing the term itself.
The usage doesn't need to spread beyond discussions of the term itself, because it was already being used long before these discussions. That's why I linked to the articles about Shakespeare's and Austen's usage, they are data. I find it a bit of a stretch to interpret that as me saying "you obviously haven't read Shakespeare and Austen" (in any case, I've never read Austen myself and definitely can't remember what pronouns Shakespeare used from what little we read in school; I leave it to the historical linguists to dig out the usage examples).
Back to the matter at hand, if you want something definitely contemporary, of the five first tweets at https://twitter.com/search?q=they I see two which could have been replaced with "he" ("if someone wants to follow you {he,they}'ll follow", "Never miss an opportunity to tell someone how much {he,they} mean to you.").
> The usage doesn't need to spread beyond discussions of the term itself, because it was already being used long before these discussions.
My mistake. I should have known that someone would take the opportunity to mince words when we're on the topic of language and communication, if it would suit their goal.
To be more concrete: I meant penetrate usage in writing in a contemporary setting. I don't know if it penetrated usage over a hundred years ago if it isn't relevant to written communication today. I communicate with people in this era, not with people from the past. Debating whether using a gendered pronoun obscures meaning or not implicitly refers to communication in this day and age, not the past.
I wouldn't say "they both" is very number-ambiguous, though sure you can always find ambiguous examples, but then language is full of ambiguity and humans still seem to manage fine.