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The Spivak pronouns are a proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns in English promulgated on LambdaMOO based on pronouns used by Michael Spivak. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in writing for gender-neutral language by those who dislike the standard terms "he/she" or singular they. Three variants of the Spivak pronouns are in use, highlighted in the declension table below. The original ''ey'' has been argued to be preferable to ''e'', because the latter would be pronounced the same as ''he'' in those contexts where ''he, him, his'' loses its h sound.〔()〕 == History == The precise history of the Spivak pronouns is unclear, since they appear to have been independently created multiple times, each time likely without knowledge of the previous. The first recorded〔Baron, Dennis E. "The Epicene Pronoun: The Word That Failed." ''American Speech'' 56.2 (1981): 83-97. ''JSTOR''. Web. Accessed 27 July 2014.〕 use of the pronouns was in a January 1890 editorial by one James Rogers, who derives ''e'', ''es'', and ''em'' from ''he'' and ''them'' in response to the proposed "thon".〔Rogers, James "That Impersonal Pronoun." Editorial. Comp. William Henry Hills ''The Writer'' Boston. Jan. 1890, 4th ed.: 12-13. ''Google Books''. Google. Web. Accessed 31 July 2014. ().〕 In 1975, Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, won a contest by the Chicago Association of Business Communicators to find replacements for "she and he", "him and her", and "his and hers". Her "transgender pronouns" ''ey'', ''em'', and ''eir'' were formed by dropping the "th" from ''they'', ''them'', and ''their''.〔Scanned clipping from , published in 〕 (See 'em.) The article that first reported the pronouns treated them as something of a joke, concluding with the line, "A contestant from California entered the word 'uh' because 'if it isn't a he or a she, it's uh, something else.' So much of eir humor."〔Black, Judie. "Ey Has a Word for It." ''Chicago Tribune'' 23 Aug. 1975, sec. 1: 12.〕 Writing in 1977, poet, playwright, and linguist Lillian Carlton submitted a letter to the journal American Speech reporting (and arguing against) the invention by "an American professor" (likely Dr. Donald MacKay〔Martyna, Wendy. "Beyond the "He/Man" Approach: The Case for Nonsexist Language." ''Signs'' 5.3 (1980): 492. JSTOR. Web. Accessed 31 July 2014. (). Citing Donald G. MacKay, "Birth of a Word," manuscript, Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles. However, if MacKay ever wrote this manuscript, it does not appear on his CV or anywhere else easily discernable.〕) of pronouns based on "the long sound of the vowel e a perfectly good... word that refers to either sex," namely "one," she also raises the observations that "spoken fast, it comes uncomfortably close to the illiterate hisself... (), ''ee'' sounds too much like ''he'' and would therefore be confusing."〔 Similar arguments, along with the desire to distance themselves from the male-centric singular "he" and derivatives, are still a primary factor in the proliferation of constructed pronouns. Also in 1977, Jeffery J. Smith, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Stanford University, writing under the pen name "Tintajl jefry," proposed "Em" as "a personal noun-pronoun which in itself gives no indication of sex, age, or number, though these may be shown by its context."〔jefry (), Tintajl. "Una: The Emerging Language of the World". (Em Institute 1997), pp. 1-4., cited in Lockheed, Marlaine E. ''Curriculum and Research for Equity: A Training Manual for Promoting Sex Equity in the Clasroom.'' Rep. no. Classroom Guide. Washington, DC.: Women's Educational Equity Act Program (ED), 1982. pp. 110-113 ()〕 He proposes a vast number of possible uses for "em," including but not limited to the replacement of "the formal Dear, because em is a thou word, a term of respect for all people, bar none... Dear Em Doe is redundant. Em Doe is enough, and, since it is brief; it makes room for given names: Em John Doe, Em Mary and John Doe, or, better, Em Doe John, Em Doe John and Mary." The May 1980 issue of ''American Psychologist'' reported on another study by MacKay, testing rates at which subjects miscomprehended the gender of a subject in textbook paragraphs when written with ''he'' meaning ''he or she'' compared with three epicene pronoun sets: ''E'', ''E'', ''Es'', ''Eself''; ''e'', ''e'', ''es'', ''eself''; and ''tey'', ''tem'', ''ter'', ''temself''. In 1983, a mathematician-educator, Michael Spivak, wrote an AMS-TeX manual, ''The Joy of TeX'' (1983), using ''E'', ''Em'', and ''Eir''. His set was similar to Elverson's, but capitalized like one of MacKay's sets. Writing in 2006, Spivak said: In May 1991, a MOO programmer, Roger Crew, added "spivak" as a gender setting for players on LambdaMOO, causing the game to refer to such players with the pronouns ''e'', ''em'', ''eir'', ''eirs'', ''emself''. The setting was added along with several other "fake genders" in order to test changes to the software's pronoun code, and was left in place as a novelty. To Crew's surprise, the Spivak setting caught on among the game's players, while the other gender settings were mostly ignored.〔Moomail from Rog to Lig, 2001-08-26, quoted in 〕 Other writers applied Elverson's original “th”-dropping rule and revived “ey”, such as Eric Klein in his legal code for a planned micronation called Oceania. John Williams's ''Gender-neutral Pronoun FAQ'' (2004) promoted the original Elverson set (via Klein) as preferable to other major contenders popular on Usenet (singular ''they'', ''sie''/''hir''/''hir''/''hirs''/''hirself'', and ''zie''/''zir''/''zir''/''zirs''/''zirself''). 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「Spivak pronoun」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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