英语语法：27 Yo as a Pronoun

Yo! Grammar Girl here.

I have grammar news about the word yo this week. Listen through to the end because YOU may be able to help a language researcher.
The grammar news is that Dr. Elaine Stotko, from the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University, and her student, Margaret Troyer, have discovered that school children in Baltimore are using the slang word yo as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. Dr. Stotko was teaching a master’s class at Johns Hopkins, and it came out during a discussion that several of the high school and middle school English teachers had noticed their students using yo as a pronoun. Often the students would be talking to another student, would point at the third person they were referring to, and would say something like "Yo threw a thumbtack at me." This made teachers think they were using yo to mean "he or she" instead of yo as you would normally hear in phrases like "Yo momma."

To test the theory, Stotko and Troyer showed kids a cartoon with a goofy-looking person, but the kids couldn't tell whether the person was male or female. Then they asked the kids to write a slang caption¹ for the cartoon. Some of the kids wrote, "Yo crazy," instead of "He or she crazy," or "They crazy." Follow-up research showed that kids definitely intended yo to mean "he or she." They used yo as a pronoun.

The researchers found that it was most common for the kids to use yo in the subject position; for example, "Yo wearin' a new coat," (to point out someone wearing a new coat). But they also used yo in the object position, as in "I saw yo at school," and "Look at yo." [Note: the kids also use "yo" as a generic² pronoun to refer to someone even when they know it is a boy or a girl. So, for example, even though they know the person they saw at school was a boy, they might say, "I saw yo at school," instead of "I saw him at school."

The kids also frequently use yo as an attention-getter (as in "Yo, Adrienne"), and as a shortened version of your (as in "Yo momma"), but the researchers were careful to show that the use as a pronoun was distinct from these other uses.

In the past I've advocated strongly for using they as a gender-neutral singular pronoun when you can't rewrite the sentence to make the whole thing plural³, and I still believe that's the best solution, but I also think the emergence⁴ of yo to fill this role in slang is fascinating.

Maybe I find this story especially interesting because the kids seem to have spontaneously filled a void in the English language. As I've discussed before, English doesn't have a pronoun for cases where you don't know a singular person's sex. Traditionally, people have used he, but most style guides object to using he because it is considered sexist and in some cases misleading. In the crazy cartoon example, for instance, if you were to write a caption that says, "He's crazy," you would lead people to believe the character is male.

What's also interesting about the kids’ language is that people -- mostly academics -- have been trying to introduce a gender-neutral singular pronoun into the English language for about 200 years, with very little success. And then a group of kids in Baltimore just make one up and start using it.

I was able to speak to Dr. Stotko on the phone last night and she was delightful⁵. Of course, I wanted to know where the kids got "yo." Did it show up on some TV show, for example? And -- I love it -- she answered, "Who knows why kids do anything." The researchers were unable to find an origin. They even went so far as to review lyrics⁶ from over 3,000 rap songs to see if it might have come from rap music, but they didn't find anything. As a professor of linguistics⁷, Dr. Stotko is very familiar with slang and changing language in general. She pointed⁸ out that kids are always creating and discarding slang terms, and that the whole point is to come up with things that their parents and other adults don't understand. She also pointed out that people create words when there is a need. For example, we always had the word pause,* but we invented the word unpause only when cassette tape players became popular and people would pause and then unpause tapes. [Note: Unpause isn't in any of my dictionaries, but I've certainly heard the word used in the way Stotko describes.]

Now yo is still definitely slang. I doubt any of us will be writing, "When a patient comes in, have yo complete an insurance form," and I still believe they and them are the best choices in such situations. Nevertheless, I have to hand it to the kids for achieving in their own private slang what academics have been unable to do in 200 years of trying.

Now, as far as Dr. Stotko knows, it's only kids in Baltimore (and maybe Milwaukee) who are using yo as a pronoun, but this is where you can help her research. She's going to be watching the comments section for this transcript⁹ at the QuickAndDirtyTips.com website. If you've heard kids outside of Baltimore using yo in this way, or using another slang term as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, she wants you to post a message in the comments section, describe what you've heard, and name the city where you've heard it.

Again, Dr. Stotko is a professor of linguistics in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Among other things, she studies dialects, how language is a system, and language differences between men and women, all of which sound like an awful lot of fun to me! The research article was published in American Speech (1), the journal of the American Dialect Society. 
Administrative¹⁰ Stuff
 
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That's all. Thanks for listening.
 

1 caption   

n.说明，字幕，标题；v.加上标题，加上说明

参考例句：

• I didn't understand the drawing until I read the caption.直到我看到这幅画的说明才弄懂其意思。
• There is a caption under the picture.图片下边附有说明。

2 generic   

adj.一般的，普通的，共有的

参考例句：

• I usually buy generic clothes instead of name brands.我通常买普通的衣服，不买名牌。
• The generic woman appears to have an extraordinary faculty for swallowing the individual.一般妇女在婚后似乎有特别突出的抑制个性的能力。

3 plural   

n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的

参考例句：

• Most plural nouns in English end in's '.英语的复数名词多以s结尾。
• Here you should use plural pronoun.这里你应该用复数代词。

4 emergence   

n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体

参考例句：

• The last decade saw the emergence of a dynamic economy.最近10年见证了经济增长的姿态。
• Language emerges and develops with the emergence and development of society.语言是随着社会的产生而产生，随着社会的发展而发展的。

5 delightful   

adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的

参考例句：

• We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
• Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。

6 lyrics   

n.歌词

参考例句：

• music and lyrics by Rodgers and Hart 由罗杰斯和哈特作词作曲
• The book contains lyrics and guitar tablatures for over 100 songs. 这本书有100多首歌的歌词和吉他奏法谱。

7 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。

8 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

9 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

10 administrative   

adj.行政的，管理的

参考例句：

• The administrative burden must be lifted from local government.必须解除地方政府的行政负担。
• He regarded all these administrative details as beneath his notice.他认为行政管理上的这些琐事都不值一顾。

11 lawsuits   

n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权，耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
• I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多，赢的也多，输的也多。 来自辞典例句