In Modern English, ''they'' is a Grammatical person, third-person personal pronoun, pronoun relating to a Subject (grammar), grammatical subject.

Morphology

In Standard English, Standard Modern English, ''they'' has five distinct word Morphology (linguistics), forms: * ''they'': the Nominative case, nominative (subjective) form * ''them'': the Accusative case, accusative (objective, called the 'Oblique case, oblique'.) and a non-standard English determiners, determinative form. * ''their:'' the dependent Genitive case, genitive (possessive) form * ''theirs'': independent Genitive case, genitive form * ''themselves'': prototypical Reflexive pronoun, reflexive form *''themself'': derivative Reflexive pronoun, reflexive form (nonstandard; now chiefly used instead of "himself or herself" as a reflexive epicenity for ''they'' in pronominal reference to a singular referent)

History

Old English had a single third-person pronoun ''He (pronoun), hē'', which had both singular and plural forms, and ''they'' wasn't among them. In or about the start of the 13th century, ''they'' was imported from a Scandinavia, Scandinavian source (Old Norse ''þeir'', History of Danish, Old Danish, Old Swedish ''þer'', ''þair''), where it was a Grammatical gender, masculine plural demonstrative pronoun. It comes from Proto-Germanic language, Proto-Germanic *''thai'', nominative plural pronoun, from Proto-Indo-European language, PIE *''to''-, demonstrative pronoun.

By Chaucer's time the ''th''- form has been adopted in London for the subject case only, whereas the oblique cases remain in their native form (''hem'', ''here'' < OE ''heom'', ''heora''). At the same period (and indeed before), Scots texts, such as Barbour's Bruce, have the ''th''- form in all cases.

The development in Middle English is shown in the following table. At the final stage, it had reached its modern form.

Singular ''they''

singular they, Singular ''they'' is a use of ''they'' as an epicenity, epicene (gender-neutral) pronoun for a singular referent. In this usage, ''they'' follows plural agreement rules (''they are'', not *''they is''), but the Semantics, semantic reference is singular. Unlike plural ''they'', singular ''they'' is only used for Person, people. For this reason, it could be considered to have personal Grammatical gender, gender. Some people refuse to use the epicene pronoun ''they'' when referring to individuals on the basis that it is primarily a plural pronoun instead of a singular pronoun.

Word of the year

In December 2019, Merriam-Webster chose singular ''they'' as word of the year. The word was chosen because "English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence ''they'' has been used for this purpose for over 600 years."

Syntax

Functions

''They'' can appear as a Subject (grammar), subject, Object (grammar), object, determiner or Complement (linguistics), predicative complement. The reflexive form also appears as an Adjunct (grammar), adjunct. * Subject: ''They're there; them being there; their being there; they allowed for themselves to be there.'' * Object: ''I saw them''; ''I directed her to them; They connect to themselves.'' * Predicative complement: ''In our attempt to fight evil, we have become them''; ''They eventually felt they had become themselves.'' * Dependent determiner: ''I touched their top''; ''them folks are helpful'' (non-standard) * Independent determiner: ''This is theirs.'' *Adjunct: ''They did it themselves.''

Dependents

Pronouns rarely take Phrase structure grammar#Dependency relation, dependents, but it is possible for ''they'' to have many of the same kind of dependents as other Noun phrase, noun phrases. * Relative clause modifier: ''they who arrive late'' * Determiner: ''Sometimes, when you think, "I will show them," the them you end up showing is yourself.'' * Adjective phrase modifier: ''the real them'' * Adverbial phrase, Adverb phrase external modifier: ''Not even them''

Semantics

Plural ''they'''s Reference, referents can be anything, including persons, as long as it doesn't include the speaker (which would require ''we'') or the addressee(s) (which would require ''you''). Singular ''they'' can only refer to individual persons. Until the end of the 20th century, this was limited to those whose gender is unknown (e.g., ''Someone's here. I wonder what they want''; ''That person over there seems to be waving their hands at us''.).

Generic

The pronoun ''they'' can also be used to refer to an unspecified group of people, as in ''In Japan they drive on the left.'' or ''They're putting in a McDonald's across the street from the Target.'' It often refers to the authorities, or to some perceived powerful group, sometimes sinister: ''They don't want the public to know the whole truth.''

Pronunciation

According to the OED, the following pronunciations are used:

In popular culture

* Them (band), Them is a Northern Irish band.

References

{{Modern English personal pronouns Gender-neutral pronouns