Address term systems and their diachronic developments are discussed in a wide range of European languages in this volume. Most chapters focus on pronominal systems, and in particular on the criteria that govern the choices between a more intimate and a more distant or polite pronoun, as for instance thou and you in Early Modern English, vos and vuestra merced in sixteenth century Spanish or du and Sie in Modern German. Several contributions deal with situations in which more than two terms can be used and several also note co-occurrence patterns of pronominal and nominal forms of address. The volume provides a multivaried picture of the evolutionary lines of address term systems and a representative range of current approaches from pragmatics and sociolinguistics to conversation analysis. It is thus a timely contribution to the rapidly expanding field of historical pragmatics.

Table of contents

Preface vii 1. Diachronic perspectives on address term systems: Introduction Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen 1–25 2. The T/V pronouns in Later Middle English Literature David Burnley † 27–45 3. The use of tu/vus in the Anglo-Norman Seinte Resureccion Tony Hunt 47–59 4. “And if ye wol nat so, my lady sweete, thanne preye I thee, [...].”: Forms of address in Chaucer's Knight's Tale Thomas Honegger 61–84 5. From pragmatics to grammar: Tracing the development of respect in the history of the German pronouns of address Horst J. Simon 85–123 6. The system of Czech bound address forms until 1700 Michael Betsch 125–146 7. Family first: Address and subscription formulae in English family correspondence from the fifteenth to the seventh century Minna Nevala 147–176 8. Spanish forms of address in the sixteenth century Paola A. Bentivoglio 177–191 9. The co-occurrence of nominal and pronominal address froms in the Shakespeare Corpus: Who says thou or you to whom? Ulrich Busse 193–221 10. Pronouns and nominal address in Shakespearean English: A socio-affective markings system in transistion Gabriella Mazzon 223–249 11. Pronominal usage in Shakespeare: Between sociolinguistics and conversation analysis Dieter Stein 251–307 12. You and thou in Early Modern English dialogues: Patterns of usage Terry Walker 309–342 13. Rectifying a standard deficiency: Second-person pronominal distinctions in varieties of English Raymond Hickey 345–374 14. Demonstrative pronouns in addressing and referring Finnish Eeva-Leena Seppänen 375–399 15. The German address system: Binary and scalar at once Raymond Hickey 401–425 Index of subjects 427–430 Index of names 431–438 Index of languages 439–441