The lack of consensus on a true gender-neutral singular personal pronoun for the third person in standard English has led to many continuing attempts to reform the language to be more gender-neutral and to accurately refer to nonbinary persons. Singular they has a long history of use, but continues to draw criticism from prescriptivist commentators. Recent research has found that those who endorse more binary gender ideology tend to reject singular they more often than those who hold more egalitarian gender views. The present study directly compared the contributions of linguistic prescriptivism and sexism to speakers' judgments in order to determine whether resistance to singular they is driven more by strict adherence to standard grammar or instead by attitudes about gender which are at odds with the language itself. American English speakers rated the grammaticality of sentences containing singular they and also responded to measures of linguistic prescriptivism and hostile and benevolent sexism. Results indicate that resistance to gender-neutral language is driven by sexist (but not necessarily hostile) attitudes about gender as much as by linguistic conservatism, though both contribute to grammatical judgments. Such resistance is particularly hostile to innovations that challenge the gender binary. These results carry implications for both theories of pronoun reference and language reform initiatives.

对于标准英语中的第三人称，其对于真正的性别中立的奇异人称代词缺乏共识，导致了许多人不断尝试将语言改革为更性别中立并准确地指代非二进制人。奇异他们有很长的使用历史，但继续吸引来自prescriptivist评论家的批评。最近的研究发现，那些谁赞同多个二进制性别意识形态倾向于拒绝奇异他们往往比那些谁持有更平等的性别观点。本研究直接比较了语言规定主义和性别歧视对说话者判断的贡献，以确定他们是否反对单数表达严格遵循标准语法，或者由对性别的态度所驱动，而这种态度与语言本身不符。美国英语音箱额定含奇异的句子的语法性，他们也回答了语言规定主义和充满敌意和善意的性别主义的措施。结果表明，对性别中立语言的抵制是由性别主义者（但不一定是敌对的）态度对性别以及语言保守主义所驱动的，尽管这两者都有助于语法判断。这种抵制特别不利于挑战性别二元化的创新。这些结果对代词指称理论和语言改革倡议都具有启示意义。