> -----Original Message----- > From: Mark A Mandel [mailto:mam at theworld.com] > Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 12:45 > To: Steve Simmons > Cc: Warlord; dragaera at dragaera.info > Subject: Re: Speaking of Vlad and Kiera > > > On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Steve Simmons wrote: > > #If one assume that Sethra is telling a minimal truth in her reply, > #all we've really found out is that whoever gave the vial to Sethra > #(as Sethra? or as Kiera?) was female. > > If Steve wants it, we don't even know that much. Somewhere in Cracks and > Shards (sorry I can't get you the cite right now) I look at the names of > Zerika's parents; in one place Brust says that X is her father and Y her > mother, and in another place he says the opposite. (Steve said, "Yeah, > that was a major fuckup.) Well, we know that Dragaeran third-person > singular pronouns are sometimes non-gender-specific -- that is, there's > a word that means "he or she" -- and I noticed that the passage in FHYA > is unambiguous about their sexes, but the other one is vague, and I > suggested that Brust-the-translator had to guess in the latter case and > guessed wrong. Steve liked that so much he made it the official > explanation. So we can't rely on the gender of an English pronoun. > If I recall correctly, "he" is used in place of the non-gender-specific pronoun, but only when the gender is not known (TPG). It seems to me that if the pronoun "he" is used with a specific referent, then it is not being used in this manner. Either way, if "she" is used, then this rule would not seem to apply at all. If it does, then this is taking ambiguity to a whole new level. W