Comic Strips

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Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
The comic must be a complete story.
If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
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If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
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They/Them (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago by qbert to c/comicstrips

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Again, we're talking about different linguistic issues, which I'll demonstrate below. I see now that my example wasn't a good example because it conflates a consequence of the problem with the problem itself.

The ambiguity

There are two different ambiguities. You're talking about ambiguity over the subject whereas I'm talking about ambiguity over the sense of the pronoun.

"I was with Dan (they/them) the other day. They hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."

No ambiguity over sense of "they". No ambiguity over subject.

"I was with the newlyweds the other day. They hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."

No ambiguity over sense of "they". No ambiguity over subject.

"I was with Dan (he/him) and Steve (he/him) the other day. He hadn't brought a poster he needed and went back to the car to get it."

No ambiguity over sense of "he". Ambiguity over subject.

"I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve the other day. They hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."

Ambiguity over sense of "they". Ambiguity over subject.

The ambiguity over the sense of the pronoun is the confusion. That's the problem. The ambiguity over the subject is a problem but not the problem I meant.