Exclusive their, or another imposter

A hard-to-categorize use of their. Clearly, their is co-referential with each other and shares its reciprocal meaning, so that A knows B’s phone number and vice versa.

On the face of it, this looks like a so called picture NP, where each other’s is a possible antecedent for a reflexive as in (i). Compare (ii), which shows that the antecedent can’t be the subject – I think this is most people’s judgement, but there is some variation.

(i) The children saw each other’s pictures of themselves.
(ii) *The children saw Bill’s pictures of themselves.

The problem in the cartoon is that each other should not be able to bind the possessive. So in picture NPs we have the following data:

(iii) *Bill saw Mary’s pictures of her. (with Mary and her co-referential)
(iv) *Mary saw Bill’s pictures of him. (with Bill and him co-referential)

Co-reference is possible with the subject, however:

(v) Bill saw Mary’s pictures of him. (with Bill and him co-referential)
(vi) Mary saw Bill’s pictures of her. (with Mary and her co-referential)

Back to the couple in the sofa. The co-reference isn’t actually between each other’s and their, then, but rather between we and their. So, their has a plural antecedent, but it’s first person, rather than third. I’m not sure everyone would approve of this particular usage, but for those who do what it appears to show is that they, them, their and themselves are used in quite a wide range of contexts and with quite a range of antecedents. Singular they is just one case. The case here is ‘imposter they‘ or, since the antecedent is first person (exclusive, i.e. the lady in the armchair is not included), ‘exclusive they‘.

An imposter

In today’s Ziggy: an case of not using singular they. This results in a person mismatch — i.e. a second person pronoun with a third person antecedent, whereas singular they involves a number mismatch.

In this particular case, I would actually prefer singular they, as in:

Will the owner of…rethink their priorities.

Is it the case that we are more sensitive to person mismatches than to number mismatches? In general, I think not. Collins & Postal (2012 Imposters, MIT Press) discuss a whole range of such mismatches. In their terminology, our example would involve a 2nd person imposter.  Here are few more imposters from Collins & Postal:

Daddy and Mommy will behave ourselves in the Bahamas.
The authors set ourselves a task to assess the fishing stock.
Your majesty should praise yourself.

The Ziggy type example, as far as I can tell, is not included in their discussion.