Sex-indefinite references to human beings in American English: effective uses and pragmatic interferences. A case study of your child.
Résumé
This paper contributes to the study of effective uses of gender-inclusive pronouns in American English, following the proscription of systematic he and, sometimes, of they, with morphologically singular sex-indefinite antecedents. While a number of studies start from the sex-indefinite anaphors in a given corpus, the present paper takes the antecedent as a starting point, for additional results. It focuses on the phrase your child, in COCA and COHA. The masculine is found to remain the default gender compared to the feminine; neutralisation appears more successful than feminisation; degree of individuation (Newman 1998) is confirmed as a relevant linguistic contribution of the pronouns, though it cannot always be predicted from the sole context; finally, the paper warns against potential interferences between gender-inclusive strategies and fundamental anaphora processing mechanisms.