"It was clear from the results that students in these two schools use yo as a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, primarily in subject position
"Yo was tuckin' in his shirt!
Yo threw a thumbtack at me.
Yo been runnin' the halls.
Yo put his foot up.
Two of the four examples still use the gendered possessive pronoun 'his', so really don't illustrate the use of 'yo' for gender-indeterminate reference.
Really, the challenge isn't when a specific person of known gender is referenced, but when a person/role of unspecified gender needs to be referenced.
'Yo' is so close to the second-person pronoun 'you', and already used as a call-to-attention 'Yo!', that using it for third-person singular would be problematic.
"You should be detail-oriented, but your secretary must be detail-obsessed. Still, yo should be able to overlook minor errors by others."
Does 'yo' refer to the 'you' this is spoken to, or to the secretary? (A 'he' or 'she' or truly useful gender-indeterminate third-person-singular pronoun would be clear in that position.)
Comments
My vote is for "Yo". It recently emerged at a couple Baltimore schools.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005298.h...
"It was clear from the results that students in these two schools use yo as a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, primarily in subject position
"Yo was tuckin' in his shirt! Yo threw a thumbtack at me. Yo been runnin' the halls. Yo put his foot up.
Two of the four examples still use the gendered possessive pronoun 'his', so really don't illustrate the use of 'yo' for gender-indeterminate reference.
Really, the challenge isn't when a specific person of known gender is referenced, but when a person/role of unspecified gender needs to be referenced.
'Yo' is so close to the second-person pronoun 'you', and already used as a call-to-attention 'Yo!', that using it for third-person singular would be problematic.
"You should be detail-oriented, but your secretary must be detail-obsessed. Still, yo should be able to overlook minor errors by others."
Does 'yo' refer to the 'you' this is spoken to, or to the secretary? (A 'he' or 'she' or truly useful gender-indeterminate third-person-singular pronoun would be clear in that position.)