Thou and You in early modern English dialogues : trials, depositions, and drama comedy / Terry Walker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walker, Terry, 1961-

Series:

Pragmatics & beyond ; v. 158.

Pragmatics & beyond new series, 0922-842X ; v. 158

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Pronoun.

English language.

You (The English word).

Thou (The English word).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (365 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book is a corpus-based study examining thou and you in three speech-related genres from 1560-1760, a crucial period in the history of second person singular pronouns, spanning the time from when you became dominant to when thou became all but obsolete. The study embraces the fields of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. Using data drawn from the recently released A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 and manuscript material, the aim is to ascertain which extra-linguistic and linguistic factors highlighted by previous research appear particularly relevant in the selection and relative distribution of thou and you. Previous research on thou and you has tended to concentrate on Drama and/or been primarily qualitative in nature. Depositions in particular have hitherto received very little attention. This book is intended to help fill a gap in the literature by presenting an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of pronoun usage in Trials, Depositions, and, for comparative purposes, Drama Comedy.

Contents:

Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Dedication

Table of contents

Preface and acknowledgements

List of tables, figures, and maps

1. Introduction

1.1 Aims and scope

1.2 Methodological framework

1.3 Presentation of corpus examples

1.4 Outline of the study

2. Corpus and genre overview

2.1 Introduction

2.2 A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760 (CED)

2.3 The corpus used for the present study

2.4 The genres investigated

2.5 Summary

3. Data classification

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The classification system for the parameters of sex, age, and rank

3.3 Summary

4. Previous research on thou and you in Early Modern English

4.1 Introduction and historical background

4.2 Theoretical approaches to the study of pronoun usage

4.3 Genre studies of pronoun usage

4.4 Thou and you in contemporaneous grammars

4.5 The development of address systems in Early Modern European languages

4.6 Summary

5. Thou and you in Trials 1560-1760

5.1 Introduction

5.2 The Trials sub-corpus

5.3 The macro-analysis

5.4 The micro-analysis: Pronoun usage in the Trials sub-corpus

5.5 Summary

6. Thou and you in Depositions 1560-1760

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The Depositions sub-corpus

6.3 The macro-analysis

6.4 The micro-analysis: Pronoun usage in the Depositions sub-corpus

7. Thou and you in Drama Comedy 1560-1760

7.1 Introduction

7.2 The Drama Comedy sub-corpus

7.3 The macro-analysis

7.4 The micro-analysis: Pronoun usage in the Drama Comedy sub-corpus

8. The role of selected linguistic factorsin thou and you usage

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Is there evidence of grammatical conditioning of thou and you usage?

8.3 Pronoun forms and their syntactic function

9. Summary and conclusions.

9.1 Overview of the aims and hypotheses

9.2 Summary of findings for the three genres

9.3 Factors influencing pronoun usage

9.4 Were the hypotheses confirmed?

9.5 Suggestions for further research

Appendix

References

Index

The series Pragmatics &amp

Beyond New Series.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612154720

9781282154728

1282154729

9789027292605

9027292604

OCLC:

320323498