Towards a linguistic typology of address pronouns in Europe - past and present

Abstract

The appropriate choice of address pronouns is an essential pragmatic practice that governs interpersonal relations across much of Europe although it remains unknown to date for how many European languages this is the case.This paper reports on issues in address in European languages and on a pilot typological survey currently under way of address pronouns in Europe, focusing on not only identifying the forms used, but also their pragmatic use, historical sources and change, shared features across areo--genetic space, and their synchronic grammatical properties.We discuss specific aspects and data relevant to these issues to highlight the potential complexity of European address pronoun systems.Initial results presented here suggest that our typological approach is also useful in identifying subtle areal phenomena --exemplified here by what we call a 'submerged' pattern of address through language contact, i.e. the spread of 3rd person plural for singular address, calqued on German Sie (3pl). Address pronouns in European languages and address research since 1960Gilman's rather simplistic dichotomy of "power" vs. "solidarity semantics", along with the equally simplistic equation of "formal" V pronouns (such as French vous or German Sie) with "power" and of "informal" T pronouns (such as French tu or German du) with "solidarity" has been superseded by alternative models, such as recent ones by Clyne, Norrby & Warren (2009), Kretzenbacher (2010) and Parkinson and Hajek (2004).These were all developed as part of the Melbourne Address Project (MAP, see section 2 for more detail), based on data collected over several years for five languages in seven European countries.However, a disproportionally large number of address studies are still concentrated on a small number of Western European languages, above all languages with (at least at first glance) simple T/V oppositions in their pronominal address systems, such as French, German and Peninsular Spanish.While there is much metalinguistic discussion about address among non--linguists (cf.Kretzenbacher 2011a for German; some examples for French in Williams & van Compernolle 2009), our knowledge of the grammaticalisation of mutual social positioning of interlocutors remains limited.In particular, how different linguistic communities arrive at and deal with specific forms of address for particular communicative situations still requires significant investigation.This is where the current pilot project, intended to be the first step in a new phase in the Melbourne Address Project (MAP), aims to make inroads.Starting with pronominal address, the larger project is ultimately focussed on giving a more developed overview and understanding of the ways of social positioning through address across European languages --in both pragmatic and grammatical terms, and across time and space. Pronominal address in contextIn descriptions of the address systems of individual languages, pronominal address is often seen as one side of a dichotomy of pronominal vs. nominal address and as linked to another dichotomy of deictic vs. vocative function of address.This approach works reasonably well in languages such as German and English (although there are functions of address, in this case vocatives, that can be fulfilled by the pronoun in German, but in some cases only by a noun in English, as underlined in Table 1 below):

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