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9 February 2010

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Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus

Morpho-syntactic variability of second person pronouns

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Ulrich Busse

Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 106

2002. xiv, 344 pp.
Publishing status: Available

Hardbound – In stock
978 90 272 5346 0 / EUR 120.00
978 1 58811 280 4 / USD 180.00

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978 90 272 9619 1 / EUR 120.00 / USD 180.00
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This study investigates the morpho-syntactic variability of the second person pronouns in the Shakespeare Corpus, seeking to elucidate the factors that underlie their choice. The major part of the work is devoted to analyzing the variation between you and thou, but it also includes chapters that deal with the variation between thy and thine and between ye and you. Methodologically, the study makes use of descriptive statistics, but incorporates both quantitative and qualitative features, drawing in particular on research methods recently developed within the fields of corpus linguistics, socio-historical linguistics and historical pragmatics. By making comparisons to other corpora on Early Modern English the work does not only contribute to Shakespeare studies, but on a broader scale also to language change by providing new and more detailed insights into the mechanisms that have led to a restructuring of the pronoun paradigm in the Early Modern period.

Table of contents

Preface and acknowledgements	xi
Abbreviations	xiii
1. General introduction	1–13
2. Previous research on the use of personal pronouns in Early Modern English with special reference to Shakespeare’s plays	15–36
3. Thou and you: A quantitative analysis	37–61
4. The distribution of thou and you and their variants in verse and prose	63–81
5. “A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted / Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion”: Address pronouns in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and other Elizabethan poetry	83–98
6. “You beastly knave, know you no reverence?”: The co-occurrence of second person pronouns and nominal forms of address	99–186
7. “Prithee no more” vs. “Pray you, chuck, come hither”: Prithee and pray you as discourse markers	187–212
8. The role of grammar in the selection of thou or you	213–221
9. “In thine own person answer thy abuse”: The use of thy vs. thine	223–248
10. “Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye”: The syntactic, pragmatic and social implications of the pronoun ye	249–281
11. Summary and conclusion	283–292
Appendix: Mitchell’s Corpus of British Drama (1580–1780)	293–295
Notes	297–310
References	311–331
Name index	333–335
Subject index	337–339

“Overall, I think the book is important as it informs our knowledge of Shakespeare's language. Furthermore, since Busse compares his findings in the Shakespeare corpus to other Early Modern English corpora, the study carries import for our understanding of the history of English more generally. Busse's presentation proceeds logically and his claims are well supported by the data he presents. One of the most beneficial aspects of Busse's work is that it provides the reader with a lot of material that could lead to further research or prove useful for in-progress studies among individual researchers. ”
K. Aaron Smith, Illinois State University in Linguist List (April 2003)

“This book contains a wealth of material which should be invaluable to all those interested in Shakespeare.”
N.F. Blake, Sheffield, in Archive für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Band 241:2 (2004)

“B's book is a welcome contribution to the study of the history of second person pronouns in English, emphasizing the centrality of the Shakespearean canon in this connection.”
Juhani Rudanko, University of Tampere, in Language, Vol. 82:1 (2006)

Linguistics: English linguistics
Germanic linguistics
Historical linguistics
Morphology
Pragmatics
Syntax