AUTHOR=Moulton Keir , Block Trevor , Gendron Holly , Storoshenko Dennis , Weir Jesse , Williamson Sara , Han Chung-hye 

TITLE=Bound Variable Singular They Is Underspecified: The Case of All vs. Every

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.880687

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.880687

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>The goal of this article is to investigate the factors that affect the acceptability and processing of <italic>they</italic>. Previous research has sought to determine whether there are acceptability and processing differences between <italic>they/themselves</italic> with plural vs. singular antecedents, with mixed results. The studies reported here address this question using bound variable singular <italic>they</italic> (e.g., <italic>Every customer claimed that they were first in line</italic>). We asked whether bound singular <italic>they</italic> is sensitive to both the morphological number and the semantic distributivity of the binding quantifier phrase. We contrasted morphologically singular quantified antecedents (<italic>every</italic> and <italic>each</italic>) with plural quantified antecedents (<italic>all</italic>). Instead of finding an effect of number, we found an effect of semantic distributivity in acceptability, with bound singular <italic>they</italic> demonstrating a cline of preference toward more distributive antecedents. Neither number nor distributivity, however, registered as an effect on reading times. Rather, for all types of quantified antecedents, encountering a pronoun like <italic>he</italic> or <italic>she</italic> rather than <italic>they</italic> registered a processing delay, in contrast to non-quantified antecedents. Our results are most fully compatible with the view that <italic>they</italic> is underspecified for number properties.</p>