Tuesday, May 04, 2004, 04:11 GMT
Although I made several searches on the Internet to find whether the word "person" is masculine or feminine (e.g. "Each person should bring her/his own lunch..."), all I was able to find as an answer was an old thread of messages posted here a few weeks ago. No definite conclusion was reached in that debate and the parties agreed that both should be used (e.g. "his/her").
Using both allows one to circumvent the problem in one's everyday writing, but from a linguist's perspective, not reaching a satisfactory answer is quite frustrating. Therefore, I allow myself to open the debate once again and to provide my own opinion, hoping that this may spark among the users of this bulletin board some new reflections.
I believe that since the word person derives from the French word "personne", which is feminine in gender, we should probably use it with "she", "her" and "hers" in order to respect its etymology. It is often used as a masculine word, but I do not see any logical reason to that, except tradition; and if one really wants to respect tradition, then one might as well go back all the way to the origins of the word and use the word "person" with the gender it had when it was first introduced in the English language.
Using both allows one to circumvent the problem in one's everyday writing, but from a linguist's perspective, not reaching a satisfactory answer is quite frustrating. Therefore, I allow myself to open the debate once again and to provide my own opinion, hoping that this may spark among the users of this bulletin board some new reflections.
I believe that since the word person derives from the French word "personne", which is feminine in gender, we should probably use it with "she", "her" and "hers" in order to respect its etymology. It is often used as a masculine word, but I do not see any logical reason to that, except tradition; and if one really wants to respect tradition, then one might as well go back all the way to the origins of the word and use the word "person" with the gender it had when it was first introduced in the English language.