Word correctness is driven by societal use. Just like you can add a word not recognized to a spelling dictionary, there could be a way to modify the grammar rules to not correct certain things that you will be using frequently. At least it doesn’t autocorrect.
As a side note, don’t some gay couples call one of themselves the wife? Which interestingly doesn’t seem to be allowed in legal documents in many countries where gay marriages are legal, the term has to be gender based. California seems to have the best solution for the future, “spouse1” and “spouse2” on their documents. Which technically still has one of them listed first… o.O
Reminds me of how automated translation services translate job names into strictly gendered languages. Wihout any context, engineer translates to the male variant and nurse to the female.
Same with translating gender neutral pronouns into languages that don’t have them. “Their husband” will translate into “her husband” (assuming you give sufficient context that “their” is singular in this instance).
It is an issue but there are no obvious solutions.
I think you are misapplying the principle of “words are how you use them” here; “his husband” is used not-infrequently and is grammatically valid to any English speaker. There is nothing to correct in the original text.
What this is using, however, is statistical frequency of use, which is a different thing altogether. And you know what relies on statistical frequency of language like this? LLMs.
English is full of words and phrases that have secondary meanings, and even obscure or contextual meanings that are real and correct! We cannot cede less popular language choices to AI spellcheck or we lose our own voices and experiences. Acknowledging that gay people exist is a tiny microcosm of this, but it’s important in many other ways too.
There isn’t anything to correct, and that’s why it’s just highlighting it, for the human to look at it because it is a statistical use consideration. If it was used not-infrequently then it wouldn’t have been triggered. Isn’t that how basic non-AI grammar and dictionaries work, and how actual dictionaries consider adding and removing words each year? Archaic and evolving use is still valid if it’s understandable in its context. I get what you’re saying, we should use such things in our text to convey our own thoughts, and thereby make it more statistically valid in the future, but this isn’t the machine trying to imply gay couples don’t exist. Again, there’s no autocorrect here to prevent the human from just looking at it and saying, no, that’s correct.
The real question from a technical pov here is what kind of usage statistic does it take before a conventional grammar checker swings away from flagging something as unusual? I’d think it would have to be rather low to avoid lots of markings. And what sources are being used to evaluate this, and how often?
Word correctness is driven by societal use. Just like you can add a word not recognized to a spelling dictionary, there could be a way to modify the grammar rules to not correct certain things that you will be using frequently. At least it doesn’t autocorrect.
As a side note, don’t some gay couples call one of themselves the wife? Which interestingly doesn’t seem to be allowed in legal documents in many countries where gay marriages are legal, the term has to be gender based. California seems to have the best solution for the future, “spouse1” and “spouse2” on their documents. Which technically still has one of them listed first… o.O
Reminds me of how automated translation services translate job names into strictly gendered languages. Wihout any context, engineer translates to the male variant and nurse to the female.
Same with translating gender neutral pronouns into languages that don’t have them. “Their husband” will translate into “her husband” (assuming you give sufficient context that “their” is singular in this instance).
It is an issue but there are no obvious solutions.
sort the spouses alphabetically
Alpha move.
Aaron move
BRB changing my name to Aardvark.
I think you are misapplying the principle of “words are how you use them” here; “his husband” is used not-infrequently and is grammatically valid to any English speaker. There is nothing to correct in the original text.
What this is using, however, is statistical frequency of use, which is a different thing altogether. And you know what relies on statistical frequency of language like this? LLMs.
English is full of words and phrases that have secondary meanings, and even obscure or contextual meanings that are real and correct! We cannot cede less popular language choices to AI spellcheck or we lose our own voices and experiences. Acknowledging that gay people exist is a tiny microcosm of this, but it’s important in many other ways too.
There isn’t anything to correct, and that’s why it’s just highlighting it, for the human to look at it because it is a statistical use consideration. If it was used not-infrequently then it wouldn’t have been triggered. Isn’t that how basic non-AI grammar and dictionaries work, and how actual dictionaries consider adding and removing words each year? Archaic and evolving use is still valid if it’s understandable in its context. I get what you’re saying, we should use such things in our text to convey our own thoughts, and thereby make it more statistically valid in the future, but this isn’t the machine trying to imply gay couples don’t exist. Again, there’s no autocorrect here to prevent the human from just looking at it and saying, no, that’s correct.
The real question from a technical pov here is what kind of usage statistic does it take before a conventional grammar checker swings away from flagging something as unusual? I’d think it would have to be rather low to avoid lots of markings. And what sources are being used to evaluate this, and how often?
Dibs on “spouse one.”
Marriage is between spouse 1 and spouse A.