TPS News

Answer: “their” should be “his.”

“A stallion can sleep on its feet, but a human male cannot lock the joints of his knees and stay upright while in a sleep mode.”

Error: The writer was lulled, either by political correctness or by the plurality of surrounding words, and used the pronoun “their” instead of “his.” The phrase “the joints of their knees…” sounds grammatically correct by itself. But whose knees and joints are being discussed? Those of “a human male.” Hence, the knees are “his.” In recent decades, some linguists have tried to abandon “his” and “her” in some locutions so as not to offend the feminine gender, resulting in such awkward phrasing as, “A student typically learns from their own mistakes.” In such situations, the better idea is to rewrite a sentence inoffensively without violating grammatical rules.
作者可能為了維護政治正確而措詞用語稍加修正，或受到複數名詞的誤導，因此不用 “his” 而用 “their” 作代名詞。「他們的膝蓋關節」看來文法無誤，但他們究竟是誰？不就是「人類男性」(a human male) 嗎？所以應該用「他的」膝蓋關節才對。近數十年來，有些語言學家想廢除 “his” 與 “her” 兩種代名詞，以避免冒犯女性，卻使措辭顯得拙劣，例如：「一個學生通常從他們的錯誤中學習」。此時最好重寫句子，不違反文法規則，也避免冒犯他人。