LINGUIST List 2.818

Sat 23 Nov 1991

Disc: Singular They, Human Research

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1. David Powers, A name for "Singular They" etc.
2. , Re: 2.768 Human Subject Research, I

May I suggest 3rd person singular (masculine, feminine, neuter)
"interdeterminate"
dP

Message 2: Re: 2.768 Human Subject Research, I

> R12040.at.UQAMtamvm1.tamu.edu says re Query 2,768 Human Research
> This will be one of many similar responses: all human subjects
> research these days must go through a human subjects committee
> approval procedure, no matter how benign or banal. I thought
> everyone knew that, but evidently not. At least you don't need
> approval for political correctness, yet.
Don't kid yourself. I know of at least one case where a child
acquisition project was blocked (temporarily) because it used
materials like:
The horse kicked the cow.
This was said to be encouraging violence, and is possibly
particularly offensive to animal rights activists, etc. This is
obviously absurd.
However, is it encouraging punishing behavior if you ask the child to
respond differently to a puppet that has said something "silly" and
to reward it if it has said the right thing? (This in order to
encourage the child to make a grammaticality judgment)
Laurie Stowe