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Generic antecedents are representatives of classes, referred to in ordinary language by another word (most often a pronoun), in a situation in which gender is typically unknown or irrelevant.〔Mark Balhorn, ('The Rise of Epicene They' ), ''Journal of English Linguistics'' 32 (2004): 79–104.〕 These mostly arise in generalizations and are particularly common in abstract, theoretical or strategic discourse. Examples (with the antecedent in boldface and the referring pronoun in italics) include "readers of Wikipedia appreciate ''their'' encyclopedia" and "the customer ''who'' spends in this market". The question of appropriate style for using pronouns to refer to such generic antecedents in the English language became politicized in the 1970s, and remains a matter of substantial dispute.〔('Gender' ), in ''The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English'', (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996).〕 ==Treatment in various languages== Many languages share the following issue with English: the generic antecedent is a representative individual of a class, whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, but pronouns are gender-specific. In languages such as English that distinguish natural gender in pronouns but not grammatical gender in nouns, normally masculine, but sometimes feminine, forms of pronouns are used for the generic reference, in what is called the ''generic'' usage of the pronoun. The context makes the generic intent of the usage clear in communication. * Example: An ambitious academic will publish as soon as she can. Unless there is reason to believe the speaker thinks ambitious academics are always female in the relevant context, the use of ''she'' in this sentence must be interpreted as a generic use. Traditionally both ''he'' and ''they'' were used for this purpose but, particularly since the nineteenth century, English style guides have frequently recommended the otherwise masculine ''he'' as a singular generic pronoun. Since the middle of the twentieth century the use of ''he'' for this purpose has been discouraged, partly because use of ''he'' is perceived as subtly biasing the listener to assume the antecedent is masculine. Various alternatives have been proposed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Generic antecedent」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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