solidarity politeness
Pronouns of Address in the History of Irish English
New Approaches to Irish English Corpus Pragmatics, 26-27 April 2019, Technische Universität Dortmund
Raymond Hickey, University of Duisburg and Essen 1 The pronoun addresssystem in the history of English
2 Formality in language: binary or scalar?
Thou — binary — You
Formality continuum (a scale from least to most formal)
3 The English address system
English is remarkable among the European languages in not having a distinction between personal pronouns used for strangers and non-strangers. Indeed English does not even have a distinction between a pronoun for the second person singular, when addressing one person, and another for the second person plural, when addressing more than one. Both these matters are related.
4 The English address system
English used to have a distinction in pronouns for address. On the one hand, there was a singular form thou ‘you-SG’, which now only survives in a few rural regions in England and in religious usage.
On the other hand there was a plural form ye ‘you-PL’which survives in some conservative varieties of English such as Scottish and Irish English. The ye form was later replaced by you, the original accusative. The singular was used for familiar and the plural for polite address.
However, the system did not establish itself, most likely because it was not absolute. In the early modern period –as attested, for instance, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet –one could say thou and you to one and the same person, depending on the situation. Hamlet appears to use thou to his mother when he is addressing her in this function and uses you when addressing her as queen.
5 The English address system
A further feature of the early modern English address system is that the thou form was often perceived as contemptuous, at least in certain varieties of the language (though not in traditional rural usage).
The net effect is that the thou – you distinction did not maintain its function of social differentiation and went into decline. By the 18th century it was gone entirely in the standard language and survived a little longer in poetry. Now it is really only present in religious usage, e.g. in prayers.
6 What do eighteenth century prescriptivistssay?
Robert Lowth (1710-1787)
John Walker (1732-1807) Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788) 7 Remarks on the demise of ‘thou’
8 Robert Lowth A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762)
The eighteenth century is key. In 1762 Robert Lowthin his grammar listed Thou and Thy (1762: 32) as pronouns of English and did not feel the need to comment on this whereas he lists Ye or You as the second person plural form. The only remark he has is a criticism of Shakespeare for using ye as the oblique form of the pronoun, e.g. The more shame for ye; I knew ye.
‘Thou, in the Polite, and even in the Familiar Style, is disused (Lowth1762: 51) and the Plural You is employed instead of it: we say You have and not Thou hast.’Use of second person singular inflection with you, e.g. you hast, you was, is described by Lowthas an ‘enormous Solecism’and ‘yet Authors of the first Rank have inadvertently falledinto it’(referring to Addison and Pope). But the use of singular forms with you in a singular sense is not an instance of non-standard verbal concord but more a transition stage when thou was replaced by you but the singular inflection was still retained.
9 John Walker (1732-1807)
A Londoner and prescriptive author of the late 18th century, Walker is best known for his Criticalpronouncingdictionary (1791) which enjoyed great popularity in its day.
Thou. s. In the oblique cases singular Thee, in the plural Ye. The second pronounpersonal; it is used only in very familiar or in very solemn language. To thou v. To treat with familiarity. Little used.
10 Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788)
Born in Dublin and educated in London and Dublin, Sheridan was first an actor and later became a travelling expert on elocution. He produced ACourseofLecturesonElocution (1762), ARhetoricalGrammaroftheEnglish language (1788) and A GeneralDictionaryof theEnglishLanguage (1780) in which he gives guidelines for the correct use of English.
11 Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
1755 12 Thou and its cases thee, thine, thy, were in OE. used in ordinary speech; in ME. they were gradually superseded by the plural ye, you, your, yours, in addressing a superior and (later) an equal, but were long retained in addressing an inferior. Long retained by Quakers in addressing a single person, though now less general; still in various dialects used by parents to children, and familiarly between equals, esp. intimates; in other cases considered as rude. In general English used in addressing God or Christ, also in homiletic language, and in poetry, apostrophe, and elevated prose.
13 14 15 16 17 How do Ireland and England compare in this respect?
18 19 Terry Walker (2003: 311), quoting Barber (1976), maintains that
... by the period 1680-1720, primarily on the evidence of Restoration Comedy, it has been argued that thou was very infrequently used to address those of inferior rank, and only occasionally used to express strong emotion, but that thou was used as a mark of male camaraderie among the gentry (Barber 1976: 211-21). Although noting that thou continued to be used among the lower ranks (and in certain regional dialects) Barber (1976: 212) argues that it had all but disappeared from the standard language by 1700 (Barber (1976: 208).
For the period 1560-1600 21.1% percent of second person pronominal forms are thou (the rest are you) whereas for the period 1680-1720 the figure is 16.4%. The absolute figures are 2,716 and 2,978 examples respectively, so the two sets are representativeand comparable.
20 Walker confirms that in her first period 1560-1600 the use of thou in comedies, one of four text types she investigates, ‘[i]nall texts thou is used to address those of lower social status (especially master to servant). Moreeover, thou is employed to show contempt’(2003: 321). For Walker’s second period, 1680-1720, the use of thou is almost completely restricted to (i) situations of strong emotion, negative or positive, and (ii) situations or exchange between males on friendly terms with each other.
Walker (2003: 333) maintains that women are leading in the implementation of you as the sole pronoun of address. The use of thou among male friends is an instance of conservative usage by men which also has a correlate in the occasional use of thou by women to men in Walker’s second period 1680-1720.
21 John Michelbourne(1646-1721) Ireland Preserved, ortheSiegeofLondonderry (1705) This piece contains a mixture of thou (written dou) and you. dou (= thou)
ReturnsWord total Percent N/1000 14
12 12 1,471 0.82 8.16 10 8
6 you 4
2
ReturnsWord total Percent N/1000 0 1 2 19 1,471 1.29 12.92 you dou
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) The Life and Opinions of TristramShandy, Gentleman (1759-67) thou ReturnsWord total Percent N/1000 217 193,366 0.11 1.12
22 Handling variation across time: The transgenerational demise of thou in the eighteenth century
YOU
THOU
23 -Interim results -
The singular second person pronoun thou survived in Irish English texts into the eighteenth century. The contexts in which it was found are similar to those in English texts: (i) higher to lower social ranks, (ii) among males showing camaraderie and (iii) situations of extreme emotion. The disappearance of thou shows a phase in which it is used alongside you with the latter become increasingly the preferred form By 1800 thou had disappeared completely from the textual record of Irish English.
24 Second person plural pronouns in thehistory of Irish English
25 Maria Edgeworth(1768- 1849) published this novel in 1801 containing much vernacular speech, but no instances of thou or youse, yeez, etc.
However, she does have ye for the singular: 1) 'And where will ye get the horse, Judy?' says I.
2) 'Judy! Judy! have ye no touch of feeling?
3) and shouldn't be proud to call ye the daughter of a shister'sson of mine
26 Transition to non-standard formal marking of second person plural
early-mid 18c: thou > you (sg.)
you, time à early-mid 19c? youse, ye (pl.) yeez
Ye continued as the supraregional form for the plural, already attested in late medieval Irish English. However, it is also found in singular contexts where it may well represent [jʊ/jə] with a reduced central vowel, schwa.
27 Other nineteenth-century writers, such as William Carleton (1794-1859; Ulster; top-left) or John& Michael Banim(Munster; bottom-left [John, 1798- 1842]) do not have a single instance of thou. But the Banimbrothers, in their O’HaraTales (1825- 6), have instances of singular ye (like Edgeworth): Right enough, Andy; you guessed right at the first offer. Do ye think of his look, widhis hand on the dour, when he went away bleedin', last night ? And so does Carleton Tales and Traits of the Irish Peasantry (1830-33) Ah, ye mane crathur," aside to Ned," if you had the blood of a hen in you, you wouldn't have the neighboursbraking their hearts laughing at you
28 -Interim result -
Thesecond personpluralpronoun ye is found in many texts from the early nineteenth century in singular contexts, suggesting that the written form
29 The rise of youse, yeez, etc.
30 Filling a gap
Because standard English does not have a specific second person plural form, most vernacular varieties of English have developedsome means of realisingthis grammatical category explicitly.
31 Second person pronouns in varieties of English
Singular Plural
English you, [thou (N), thee (W, SW)] you, you guys Irish English you ye, youse, yeez Scottish English you yous, yousyins Newfoundland English you ye Southern American English you y’all, y’uns African American English you you, y’all Caribbean English you unu, wuna, yina, etc. South African English you youse, y’all Australian English you youse New Zealand English you youse Pacific Creole English yu yupela
32 Yous(e) does not appear abundantly in the textual record until the early twentieth century.
33 However, there are literally one or two instances from the earlyto mid nineteenth century:
Samuel Lover (1797-1868) is the author of the novel Handy Andy. A Tale of Irish Life (London: Routledge, 1841). In a text of 187,495 words there is one instance of yous.
"It's yours, sir," said Mat, delighted, loading Flanagan with "Good byes," and "God save yous," until they should meet next morning at breakfast.
34 William Carleton (1794-1859)
In22 texts,consisting of nearly all Carleton’sprose writings, there are two instances, both found inthe story The Hedge School (from Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry, 1830-33)
"Thin I'll bring you the same that Father Maguire got last night on his wayhome aftheranointin' 'ouldKattyDuffy," replied Brady. "I'm sure, whateverI might be afthergiving to strangers, Tim, I'd be long sorry togive yous anything but the right sort."
"I don't know, Sir, they're all at it." "Boys, I'll go down to yous." ..."I can't carry him, Sir, he'd be too heavy for me
35 Second person pronouns present a complex picture during the past two to three centuries in Ireland. First one has the demise of thou in the eighteenth century, then both the retention of ye and the use of a reduced form of you, [jʊ/jə], for singular address in the early nineteenth century. It is not until the late nineteenth century that plural forms with a morphological {S} marker begin to appear widely in the textual record, i.e. yous(e), ye(e)z. Given that the language shift for the majority of Irish speakers occurred in the early to mid nineteenth century it may well be that this group of speakers created a formally marked plural pronoun as the equivalent to Irish sibh [ʃɪv] leading to a formal distinction between you [jʊ/jə] and youse [ju:z]. With that the final sibilant became the signal for the plural and was added to ye to give yeez.
36 Thank you for your attention. Any questions?
Raymond Hickey English Linguistics University of Duisburg and Essen