2307. jcreed (pool-71-240-3-218.pitt.east.verizon.net) – 31 Mar 2005 09:47:09 [ They are a woman ]

This apologist doesn't think TASP is "bad overloading" any more than the singular/plural overloading on "you" is, or any more than the nominative/accusative overloading on "who" is.

In fact "you" is a terrific example, since historically early on (if I have my facts right) there was unambiguously the singular "thou" and the plural "you", but the plural "you" was co-opted into the singular number although syntactically it's still treated the same as the plural for the purposes of verb conjugation. We don't say "you is", (nor do we say "you art") we say "you are", just as we say "they are". We don't say "you walks" (nor do we say "you walkst") we say "you walk", just as we say "they walk".

Is this a problem? If we found people who say "you is" (and I bet we could) are they being more correct than us?

Few people say things like "and to the people assembled before me, I say: you are a woman" (which similarly puts pressure on you to be plural from one side and singular from the other) because it's obviously ungrammatical even according to the YASP apologist's notion of grammaticality. You're not showing that it's more likely to be confused and make mistakes with a different sense of grammaticality, you're just showing that it's possible.

2306. Anonymous (12-218-107-244.client.mchsi.com) – 31 Mar 2005 04:35:46 [ Math Shirts ]

Teri Shivo needs the Quadratic equation.

2305. Max (ce-web3.wesleyan.edu) – 31 Mar 2005 00:21:17 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Great, next you're gonna tell me I need three different kinds of spacebars...

2304. Anonymous (203.97.42.84) – 30 Mar 2005 17:54:32 [ FLAMING TEXT ]

U ALL SUCK 2 THE DAZES

2303. Anonymous (203.97.42.84) – 30 Mar 2005 17:52:46 [ FLAMING TEXT ]

IS THIS A CHATING LINE

2302. Anonymous (203.97.42.84) – 30 Mar 2005 17:52:17 [ FLAMING TEXT ]

HELLO EVERYONE

2301. Max (ce-web3.wesleyan.edu) – 30 Mar 2005 17:38:47 [ They are a woman ]

Right, Hillary Clinton would have been fine if he or she avoided TASP!

2300. Tom 7 (gs82.sp.cs.cmu.edu) – 30 Mar 2005 16:33:49 [ They are a woman ]

That's not the only thing I'm observing. I think that this specific disagreement would not have happened if it hadn't been for the speaker's habit of using TASP. The correlation of number disagreement with the use of TASP here (which "most" consider a mistake, but surely apologists at least agree that TASP is "overloaded" in a bad way with regard to its plurality) is surely a data point in favor of the "leads to" hypothesis.

Nobody with the intellectual ability of (even) Hillary Clinton would have made this kind of mistake if he or she just avoided TASP in the first place.

2299. jcreed (wittgenstein.wv.cc.cmu.edu) – 30 Mar 2005 12:48:06 [ They are a woman ]

I disagree that observing that number disagreement is still possible means that TASP "leads to" more confusion.

2298. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-172.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 30 Mar 2005 11:36:36 [ They are a woman ]

cdqr, hah!

marc: My point is that using T-A-S-P like this tends to lead to confusion over number agreement, which leads to even grosser grammatical problems. I'm not trying to say that this is a use that staunch T-A-S-P defenders like jcreed would accept.

Moreover, this is an easy sentence to express, unambiguously and unsexistly, if you don't try to use 'they,' which is at least one data point in the argument over whether such a pronoun is needed.

2297. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-172.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 30 Mar 2005 11:29:56 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Max: are you still using a one-button mouse? ;)
I'll fix it in the next version.

Stephan:
(1) I don't see this on either of my XP installations. Are you using a theme or something?

(2) Oops, I'll fix it.

(3) Yeah...

(OT) Sure.

2296. Dwindlehop (c-24-20-130-246.client.comcast.net) – 30 Mar 2005 11:07:05 [ They are a woman ]

Why, no, I believe the underlying point she was trying to express makes her sound like an idiot.

2295. Marc (c-24-62-124-147.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) – 30 Mar 2005 09:29:27 [ They are a woman ]

Tom, this isn't necessarily an instance of "the use of 'they' as a singular pronoun" since "they" references "people" which is plural. It's just that it then is messed up by switching to singular after that point ("a woman"), which is what shouldn't have happened.

2294. cdqr (ool-435392aa.dyn.optonline.net) – 30 Mar 2005 01:12:32 [ They are a woman ]

Well, that certainly falsified my theory of italics-production. Whither semantic markup, I ask you?

2293. cdqr (ool-435392aa.dyn.optonline.net) – 30 Mar 2005 01:03:31 [ They are a woman ]

Let's give Clinton the benefit of the doubt. Note that we obtain a perfectly grammatical sentence if we parse "they" as an anaphoric reference to "kids". Try it! The kids are a woman; therefore, the gaming industry teaches them it's OK to diss people. It seems to me the gaming industry is both sexist <em>and</em> possessed of a voodoo theory of compound beings.

2292. jcreed (wittgenstein.wv.cc.cmu.edu) – 30 Mar 2005 00:42:19 [ They are a woman ]

Yeah, some grammatical verb phrases, to my ear are:

(1) "insult a person just because they're a woman"
(2) "insult a person just because she's a woman"
(3) "insult people just because they're women"

The given one,
"insult people just because they're a woman"
sounds wrong to me because, as catamporphism pointed out, there's number disagreement. I have no problem reading "they" as third-person plural and third-person singular (just as I have no problem hearing "who" as being nominative and accusative - have we already argued about this point? Do you think people are wrong for not ever using "whom"? Does eliminating "whom" make the language more/less elegant or consistent?) but that sentence contradictorily forces both interpretations, the singular interpretation from the (syntactically "plural" in the conjugation of "to be", but semantically singular) "they're a woman", the plural interpretation coming of course from "people".

In fact I would slightly prefer (1) to (2), because the noun person still sounds gender-neutral to my ear as a noun, even though later context means it's female.

2291. Stephan (fl-69-68-129-98.dyn.sprint-hsd.net) – 29 Mar 2005 23:58:46 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Oh yeah, one more thing:
3)In the editor, the right-click region select area doesn't scale properly at different zoom levels. (The purple selection rectangle is drawn too large). Presumably this isn't a bug so much as just being still in development.

(OT: Is this the preferred location for bug reports?)

2290. Donna (pool-141-158-121-37.pitt.east.verizon.net) – 29 Mar 2005 23:50:55 [ They are a woman ]

She used the word 'diss', therefore I ignored the rest of the sentence. :)

2289. Stephan (fl-69-68-129-98.dyn.sprint-hsd.net) – 29 Mar 2005 23:29:32 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Found two bugs in escape 200503290, under Windows XP:
1) When the screen is maximized, the graphics raise too high, and approximately half the top line of tiles are 'cut off' under the window's title bar. (This affects the editor too.)

2) In the editor, setting random 'how' mode to 7 and clicking random will crash the application. (This is repeatable.)

2288. Max (ce-web3.wesleyan.edu) – 29 Mar 2005 22:56:09 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Do you think you could add extra commands for mac users to correspond with middle-click and right-click so we can access those controls? apple-click, ctrl-click or option-click, for instance?

2287. Tom 7 (h-67-101-139-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 29 Mar 2005 20:03:01 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Ah, good.
It changed a little because multiple solutions are now supported, but that shouldn't affect the 'ratings' section.

2286. Eger (h-68-166-176-218.phlapafg.covad.net) – 29 Mar 2005 19:58:34 [ I, for one, do not welcome our new llncs.sty overlords ]

They'll probably let you get away with it if you put nifty illustrations in. What you're fighting is people's eyes glazing over and deciding not to expend the (large cognitive) cost to process your complex technical information. If you were to have the comics section of the conference/journal in <em>your</em> paper, they'd probably be more forgiving.

Well, either that, or you could fully explain <a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=805852&dl=ACM&coll=GUIDE">all modern programming language features</a> in twenty pages.

2285. Tom 7 (h-67-101-139-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 29 Mar 2005 19:24:56 [ They are a woman ]

Very funny Heather. ;)

2284. Anonymous (cobamide4.bio.pitt.edu) – 29 Mar 2005 19:23:36 [ They are a woman ]

Tom, why do you hate women so much?

2283. mjn (pool-151-205-107-113.ny325.east.verizon.net) – 29 Mar 2005 18:14:37 [ NEW: Escape Beta 2! ]

Yup, it's with the text format.