Last update:
9 February 2010
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Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems
2003. viii, 446 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 5348 4 / EUR 130.00 978 1 58811 310 8 / USD 195.00
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
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
“In a way the book is almost too good. Being thorough in the subjects it touches upon and showing internal consistency, it is very nearly a textbook that one could wish for a measure of rewriting in order to go the whole way and make it really so.”
Margaret J-M Sonmez, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, on Linguist List 14-1841.
“In conclusion, I would like to say that 'Diachronic Perspectives' is a real asset to the study of address forms. Many different perspectives are brought together and the introduction provides a comprehensive and clear overview of the field. The editors put effort into relating papers to each other both by describing general issues in their introduction as well as by adding cross-references to papers with the same topic. They give a clear overview of recuring themes such as motivations in the choice of primary sources and the interpretation of pronoun switching, retractable address systems and norm deviation. The book also reveals problematic issues in address term research such as the issue of possible generalizations on data research.”
“This book is a varied and absorbing collection which is a must for every researcher with interest in TOA theories.”
Subject classification |
Linguistics