Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T07:03:12.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The diffusion of subject you: A case study in historical sociolinguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2005

Helena Raumolin-Brunberg
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki

Abstract

Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) and the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC), this study describes how the second-person object form you diffused among the population of England during the late middle and early modern period (1350–1710). After the take-off in c. 1480, you replaced the old subject form ye very rapidly, in about three generations of speakers. This article shows that this was a change from below in terms of social awareness, because you was preferred in oral genres and informal registers in the earliest stages of its use. The study suggests that the social origin of you was among the middle ranks, and women led the change in its critical period of diffusion. No specific region has been found as the origin of this change, but London and the Court adopted it before the North and East Anglia.The research reported here was supported in part by the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence funding for the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barry, Jonathan. (1994). Introduction. In Jonathan Barry & Christopher Brooks (eds.), The middling sort of people: Culture, society and politics in England 1550–1800. London: Macmillan. 127.
Biber, Douglas. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biber, Douglas, & Finegan, Edward. (1997). Diachronic relations among speech-based and written registers in English. In Terttu Nevalainen & Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.), To explain the present: Studies in the changing English language in honour of Matti Rissanen, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 52. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. 253275.
Busse, Ulrich. (2002). Linguistic variation in the Shakespeare Corpus: Morpho-syntactic variability of second person pronouns. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Clay, C. G. A. (1984). Economic expansion and social change: England 1500–1700 (Vols. I–II). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC). (1998). Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi, & Minna Palander-Collin. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.
Croft, William. (2000). Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. London: Longman.
Fletcher, Anthony. (1995). Gender, sex & subordination in England 1500–1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC). (1991). Compiled by the Helsinki Corpus project team. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.
Kenyon, John S. (1914). Ye and you in the King James Version. PMLA 24, New Series 12:453471.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja. (1996). Manual to the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Coding conventions and lists of source texts (3rd ed.). Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.
Labov, William. (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2:205254.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 2: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lutz, Angelica. (1998). The interplay of external and internal factors in morphological restructuring: The case of you. In Jacek Fisiak & Marcin Krygier (eds.), Advances in English historical linguistics (1996). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 189210.
Matthews, Peter. (2002). On change in ‘E-language’. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Motives for language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 717.
Milroy, James, & Milroy, Lesley. (1985). Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics 21:339384.Google Scholar
Milroy, James, & Milroy, Lesley. (1993). Mechanisms of change in urban dialects: The role of class, social network and gender. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(1):5777.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. (1987). Language and social networks (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Mustanoja, Tauno F. (1960). A Middle English syntax. Part I. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 23. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Nevalainen, Terttu. (1996). Social stratification. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds.), Sociolinguistics and language history: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 5776.
Nevalainen, Terttu. (1998). Social mobility and the decline of multiple negation in Early Modern English. In Jacek Fisiak & Marcin Krygier (eds.), Advances in English historical linguistics (1996). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 263291.
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2000). Gender differences in the evolution of standard English: Evidence from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Journal of English Linguistics 28(1):3859.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2002a). Language and woman's place in earlier English. Journal of English Linguistics 30(2):181199.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2002b). Women's writings as evidence for linguistic continuity and change in Early Modern English. In Richard Watts & Peter Trudgill (eds.), Alternative histories of English. London: Routledge. 191209.
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1989). A corpus of Early Modern Standard English in a socio-historical perspective. Neuphilologische Mittelungen 90(1):61104.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1993). Early Modern British English. In Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö, & Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), Early English in the computer age. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 5373.
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1996). The Corpus of Early English Correspondence. In Terttu Nevalainen & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds.), Sociolinguistics and language history: Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 3954.
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2000). The changing role of London on the linguistic map of Tudor and Stuart England. In Dieter Kastovsky & Arthur Mettinger (eds.), The history of English in a social context: A contribution to historical sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 279337.
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2003). Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman.
Ogura, Mieko, & Wang, William S.-Y. (1996). Snowball effect in lexical diffusion: The development of -s in the third person singular present indicative in English. In Derek Britton (ed.), English historical linguistics 1994: Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 119141.
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, & Svartvik, Jan. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.
Rand, David, & Sankoff, David. (1990). GoldVarb version 2: A variable rule application for the Macintosh. Montréal: Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Université de Montréal.
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2003). Leaders of linguistic change in Early Modern England. Paper presented at NWAVE 32, Philadelphia, October 9–12, 2003.
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, & Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena. (1997). Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference. In Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö, & Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.), Grammaticalization at work: Studies of long-term developments in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1785.
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, & Nevalainen, Terttu. (1997). Social embedding of linguistic changes in Tudor English. In Raymond Hickey & Stanislaw Puppel (eds.), Language history and linguistic modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 701717.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (ed.). (2000). European Journal of English Studies. Special issue on social networks. 4(3).
Trudgill, Peter. (1992). The dialects of England. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wrightson, Keith. (1991). Estates, degrees, and sorts: Changing perceptions of society in Tudor and Stuart England. In Penelope J. Corfield (ed.), Language, history and class. Oxford: Blackwell. 3052.
Wrightson, Keith. (1994). ‘Sorts of people’ in Tudor and Stuart England. In Jonathan Barry & Christopher Brooks (eds.), The middling sort of people: Culture, society and politics in England 1550–1800. London: Macmillan. 2851.