Spivak pronoun
Encyclopedia
The Spivak pronouns are a proposed set of gender-neutral pronoun
s in English
popularized by LambdaMOO
based on pronouns used by Michael Spivak
. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in gender-neutral language
by some people who dislike the more common alternatives "he/she" or singular they
.
Two variants of the Spivak pronouns are in use, highlighted in the declension
table below.
The May 1980 issue of American Psychologist reported on a study by Donald G. MacKay, testing rates at which subjects miscomprehended the gender of a subject in textbook paragraphs when written with he meaning he or she compared with three epicene pronoun sets: E, E, Es, Eself; e, e, es, eself; and tey, tem, ter, temself.
In 1983, a mathematician
-educator, Michael Spivak
, wrote an AMS-TeX manual, The Joy of TeX (1983), using E, Em, and Eir. His set was similar to Elverson's, but capitalized like one of MacKay's sets. Writing in 2006, Spivak said:
In May 1991, a MOO programmer, Roger Crew, added "spivak" as a gender setting for players on LambdaMOO
, causing the game to refer to such players with the pronouns e, em, eir, eirs, emself. The setting was added along with several other "fake genders" in order to test changes to the software's pronoun code, and was left in place as a novelty. To Crew's "dismay", the Spivak setting caught on among the game's players, while the other gender settings were mostly ignored.
Other writers applied Elverson's original “th”-dropping rule and revived “ey”, such as Eric Klein in his legal code for a planned micronation called Oceania. John Williams's Gender-neutral Pronoun FAQ (2004) promoted the original Elverson set (via Klein) as preferable to other major contenders popular on Usenet (singular they, sie/hir/hir/hirs/hirself, and zie/zir/zir/zirs/zirself).
, feminine
, neuter, either, both, "splat" (asterisk
), plural, egotistical, royal, and 2nd. The selected gender determines how the game engine refers to a player.
On LambdaMOO, they became standard practice for help texts ("The user may choose any description e likes"), referring to people of unknown gender ("Who was that guest yesterday, eir typing was terrible"), referring to people whose gender was known but without disclosing it ("Yes I've met Squiggle. E was nice."), or of course characters declaring themselves to be of gender Spivak. In recent years (2000 onwards), this usage is declining.
Nomic
games, especially on the Internet, often use Spivak pronouns in their rulesets, as a way to refer to indefinite players.
A more academic criticism stems from regarding Spivak pronouns as prescriptive grammar and as an invention for the purpose of avoiding a proscribed "singular they
" form. Supporters of the singular they
argue that the form has been in use for centuries and thus is hardly a recent corruption of proper speech.
}}
Gender-neutral pronoun
A gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun that is not associated with any gender. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless...
s in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
popularized by LambdaMOO
LambdaMOO
LambdaMOO is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest MOO today.LambdaMOO was founded in late 1990 or early 1991 by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC. Now hosted in the state of Washington, it is operated and administered entirely on a volunteer basis...
based on pronouns used by Michael Spivak
Michael Spivak
Michael David Spivak is a mathematician specializing in differential geometry, an expositor of mathematics, and the founder of Publish-or-Perish Press. He is the author of the five-volume Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. He received a Ph.D...
. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in gender-neutral language
Gender-neutral language
Gender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate reference to gender in terms that describe people...
by some people who dislike the more common alternatives "he/she" or singular they
Singular they
Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
.
Two variants of the Spivak pronouns are in use, highlighted in the declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
table below.
| | Subject Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments... |
Object Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... |
Possessive Adjective Possessive adjective Possessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something... |
Possessive Pronoun Possessive pronoun A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively... |
Reflexive Reflexive pronoun A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent... |
|
| Masculine Masculine Masculine or masculinity, normally refer to qualities positively associated with men.Masculine may also refer to:*Masculine , a grammatical gender*Masculine cadence, a final chord occurring on a strong beat in music... |
he laughs | I hugged him | his heart warmed | that is his | he loves himself |
| Feminine Feminine Feminine, or femininity, normally refers to qualities positively associated with women.Feminine may also refer to:*Feminine , a grammatical gender*Feminine cadence, a final chord falling in a metrically weak position... |
she laughs | I hugged her | her heart warmed | that is hers | she loves herself |
| Singular they Singular they Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability... |
they laugh | I hugged them | their heart warmed | that is theirs | they love themself |
| Elverson (1975) | ey laughs | I hugged em | eir heart warmed | that is eirs | ey loves emself |
| MacKay (1980) | E laughs | I hugged E | Es heart warmed | ||
| Spivak (1983) | E laughs | I hugged Em | Eir heart warmed | ||
| LambdaMOO “spivak” (1991) | e laughs | I hugged em | eir heart warmed | that is eirs | e loves emself |
History
In 1975, Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, won a contest by the Chicago Association of Business Communicators to find replacements for "she and he", "him and her", and "his and hers". Her "transgender pronouns" ey, em, and eir were formed by dropping the "th" from they, them, and their.The May 1980 issue of American Psychologist reported on a study by Donald G. MacKay, testing rates at which subjects miscomprehended the gender of a subject in textbook paragraphs when written with he meaning he or she compared with three epicene pronoun sets: E, E, Es, Eself; e, e, es, eself; and tey, tem, ter, temself.
In 1983, a mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
-educator, Michael Spivak
Michael Spivak
Michael David Spivak is a mathematician specializing in differential geometry, an expositor of mathematics, and the founder of Publish-or-Perish Press. He is the author of the five-volume Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. He received a Ph.D...
, wrote an AMS-TeX manual, The Joy of TeX (1983), using E, Em, and Eir. His set was similar to Elverson's, but capitalized like one of MacKay's sets. Writing in 2006, Spivak said:
In May 1991, a MOO programmer, Roger Crew, added "spivak" as a gender setting for players on LambdaMOO
LambdaMOO
LambdaMOO is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest MOO today.LambdaMOO was founded in late 1990 or early 1991 by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC. Now hosted in the state of Washington, it is operated and administered entirely on a volunteer basis...
, causing the game to refer to such players with the pronouns e, em, eir, eirs, emself. The setting was added along with several other "fake genders" in order to test changes to the software's pronoun code, and was left in place as a novelty. To Crew's "dismay", the Spivak setting caught on among the game's players, while the other gender settings were mostly ignored.
Other writers applied Elverson's original “th”-dropping rule and revived “ey”, such as Eric Klein in his legal code for a planned micronation called Oceania. John Williams's Gender-neutral Pronoun FAQ (2004) promoted the original Elverson set (via Klein) as preferable to other major contenders popular on Usenet (singular they, sie/hir/hir/hirs/hirself, and zie/zir/zir/zirs/zirself).
Usage
Spivak is one of the allowable genders on many MUDs and MOOs. Others might include some selection of: masculineMasculine
Masculine or masculinity, normally refer to qualities positively associated with men.Masculine may also refer to:*Masculine , a grammatical gender*Masculine cadence, a final chord occurring on a strong beat in music...
, feminine
Feminine
Feminine, or femininity, normally refers to qualities positively associated with women.Feminine may also refer to:*Feminine , a grammatical gender*Feminine cadence, a final chord falling in a metrically weak position...
, neuter, either, both, "splat" (asterisk
Asterisk
An asterisk is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star...
), plural, egotistical, royal, and 2nd. The selected gender determines how the game engine refers to a player.
On LambdaMOO, they became standard practice for help texts ("The user may choose any description e likes"), referring to people of unknown gender ("Who was that guest yesterday, eir typing was terrible"), referring to people whose gender was known but without disclosing it ("Yes I've met Squiggle. E was nice."), or of course characters declaring themselves to be of gender Spivak. In recent years (2000 onwards), this usage is declining.
Nomic
Nomic
Nomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting...
games, especially on the Internet, often use Spivak pronouns in their rulesets, as a way to refer to indefinite players.
Criticism
The use of Spivak pronouns and other neologisms offered as alternative grammar or spelling is sometimes viewed by certain people as a "linguistic pretension" with political overtones, and its introduction may be received by some with the same degree of hostility associated with certain other neologisms with political overtones.A more academic criticism stems from regarding Spivak pronouns as prescriptive grammar and as an invention for the purpose of avoiding a proscribed "singular they
Singular they
Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
" form. Supporters of the singular they
Singular they
Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
argue that the form has been in use for centuries and thus is hardly a recent corruption of proper speech.
"Spivak" 1991 set (e, eir, em)
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=aFKqSzIxCLkC&pg=PA190}}