In this paper I will be investigating and comparing the loss of the 2nd person informal singular, or T, in English and Dutch, and the subsequent shift of the 2nd person plural/formal to the T position. First I will examine the sociopolitical scene in 18th century England, which is when T was last used with regularity. Secondly I will define the T/V distinction so that the remainder of my paper will be better understood. Thirdly I will propose my hypothesis as to the specific reasons behind this loss. Then I intend to examine the 16th century scene for Middle Dutch to Modern Dutch. While Dutch lost T several centuries before English, I believe that there must be similar social reasons for T-loss, and these reasons must be unique, as no other Indo-European languages have lost T. The fifth section will compare the two sociopolitical scenes and examine them for obvious and subtle correlations and also address competing theories as to T-loss, while the final section will conclude my results.

T/V distinction and definition

The T/V distinction is named for the Latin tu and vos which are the 2nd person singular and plural pronouns. What it refers to is not the actual distinction between singular and plural, but the use of the plural form as a formal singular. So, V is used for the second person singular in cases of necessary formality, and replaces T. Latin did not make the distinction between formal and informal uses – they had other labels formality similar to Modern English’s use of sir, ma’am, or miss. Almost all European languages make the T/V distinction, for example French speakers call their friends by tu but their teachers and other persons in positions of authority by vous – the 2nd person plural.

The distinction is not just made in Romance languages, as languages like Russian also makes this distinction between tui and vui. The usage of vos as a formal singular comes from the Roman Emperors in the 4th century AD to signal the connection between ruler and people, so addressing the ruler was addressing the populace of the nation (Brown & Gilman, 1960). Anecdotally we can apply this reasoning to the English royal “we” that is stereotypically used for Old English kings and queens. It is important to note that T is usually used to speak to God as opposed to the formal V. English’s T/V are thou and you , although only you survives today. These two also had multiple forms based on case, as Old and Middle English were case based systems. This is worth mentioning because even though Modern English lacks case, some dialects of English use different the old accusative form ye instead of nominative you(George J., 1983). In Dutch the T/V distinction is slightly more complex, however is still relevant. The middle Dutch du, which is this language’s T, was lost in transition to Modern Dutch, but Modern Dutch still retains a T, however it is completely unrelated morpheme U, dissimilar to the 2nd person plural jij. Jij also is used as a T, but it varies dialectically, and for the purposes of this paper I will be using U as the standard. The reformation of a T in Dutch after initial loss is not something that will be left unanswered, although the reasonings behind this are less important to the general study of T-loss in general. For this study du is of higher importance, although references to U will be necessary to elaborate certain points.

English T-Loss

The social backdrop for the circumstances of English T loss is complicated, but not entirely opaque. The period of the 1500’s to the 1700’s, which is when the use of thou was on the steepest decline was a period of massive geographic expansion for the English language, and a massive social upheaval was in progress (Dickens, 1989). The Protestant Reformation had just started, and was bringing about the fracturing of the Catholic Church and the New World had been recently discovered and was opening up for colonization. Mention of the New World is important not only because it spread native English speakers farther than before, but also because it explains the variance in T-loss and V-usage. In England, certain religious sects, notably the Puritans, had the socially unacceptable practice of calling everyone they met on the street by thou, which in the aristocratic society England maintained at the period, would not tolerate.

The suggestion of such informality and friendship offended any aristocrat who was spoken to this way, and even offended lower class members who disagreed with the sects’ religious teachings. The practice of using thou for any person met upon the street was brought on by the Protestant teachings that all men are equal in the eyes of God, which were contrary to popular Catholic and Anglican teachings. The political scene in England was not friendly in any way to religious freedom, especially with the Reign of the Tudors, when Catholicism returned to England in the mid 1500’s and essentially forced all the Protestants to escape to the Americas. With the association of thou and Protestant radicals firmly locked in the Public’s mind, use of thou in any situation other than prescripted religious texts was completely stigmatized. While T had formerly been associated only with L domains (which included God, as studied in Gal, 1978), it had now been shifted exclusively to H domains.

Dutch T-Loss

The Netherlands was one of the major centres of the Protestant Reformation, who generally defied convention in terms of standard formalism use, and essentially spelled the doom of du by setting gij (another form of jij) as the standard 2nd person formal in the State Bible translation at the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619 (Howe, 1995). This moved du into the realm of completely interpersonal use, but not necessarily intrapersonal use. Gal’s study of Hungarian immigrants in Austria showed that a majority of the Hungarian immigrants, even those who used German as their H domain language, used Hungarian when they prayed or used any kind of inner monologue. Without delving completely into the realm of philosophical linguistics, with the generally accepted role that religion plays in medieval culture, speaking to God was and is likely the most informal manner of speech possible. The use of gij/jij in intrapersonal dialogue and all H domain activities essentially would have forced du out of casual everyday speech. Howe’s study also mentions that du survived in rural areas longer than in cities, where the State Bible Translation would have been more regularly used as opposed to older, more traditional Bibles. Du died out before 1700 came and went, which coincidentally is around the same time that English finally gave up on thou.

Discussion, Comparison and Arguments

To discover the integral roots of T-loss, comparisons must be drawn between the English and Dutch sociopolitical scenes during the obsolescence of T. The years of 1500 – 1700 will be our chosen area of investigation, as multiple sources point to the 1700’s as the last period in which thou was used with regularity in England and when Middle Dutch “evolved” into Modern Dutch. In both of these countries, as mentioned above, there were religious motivations for the loss of T. In English, T was overtly stigmatized and stigmatized variants tend to disappear rather quickly for fear of social ostracization, while in Dutch, V was widened and heightened to all H domains and some very exclusive L domains. At this point it would be prudent to examine elsewhere in the religious world of 16th century Europe and postulate as to the reasons why the rest of Europe did not lose their T. Going by religious influence alone, we will postulate that Protestant countries are more likely to lose T than Catholic ones, because of Protestantism’s love of informalism and mutual respect. So the country to be most looked at is the Holy Roman Empire, which actually had become majority Protestant. However, in German, sie is used as the second person formal singular, even though it is standard third person singular. Harley & Ritter 2002 states that third person pronouns are the most unmarked and featureless pronouns, so less influenced by social values, which could explain why German did not initially lose its T through general informalism.

There has been some argument that while sociopolitical factors can account for some of the loss, it cannot explain the total loss of T. The total loss, this is argued, is due to economy in the verbal paradigm (Aalverse 2004). To elaborate, since T became marked, it would be acquired later than unmarked forms, if at all (Neeleman & Weerman 1999, Harley & Ritter 2002). I argue that economy in the verbal paradigm cannot explain two things: firstly, it cannot explain the loss of Dutch T because Dutch T was not marked as English T and secondly, if the verbal paradigm is attempting to be economic, I do not believe that it would lead to a loss of T completely, as this brings linguistic confusion and greater dialectical diffusion. The results of T loss in English have been especially devastating to verbal economy, with a multitude of V forms even within personal vernaculars, and confusion in declining possessives. With you as the Modern English T, speakers are left with an empty set in the V paradigm. English speakers now drastically vary on V forms – the most popular being y’all, youse, you guys and you all, with you being used increasingly less and less as the plural variant, at least in L domains – it retains its plurality in H domains (Jochnowitz, 1983). Other forms exist, including youse guys, but these forms are generally only found in minor Scottish or Southern dialects. Economy in the verbal paradigm, while it pays no attention to requirements of social formalisms, would require that one form be used for both singular and plural.

This seems unoffensive enough, but clearly both English and Dutch refuse to allow empty sets in the pronoun paradigm, or one to serve a double purpose grammatically. While this paper is not deep enough or researched enough to formally propose a set of natural personal pronouns, the results seem to indicate that two different 2nd person pronouns are required in a natural language. This idea is not new or far fetched, as it is extremely similar to the shift from pidgin to creole, where children invent new forms to fill in the holes that kept its parent pidgin from being a full fledged language. The new T for Modern Dutch is je/jou, which is obviously related to the plural jij, a simple sound change that brought about a new singular morpheme, while English has been forced to replace V, as V had already shifted to the T position, which was done by creating compound nouns or adding additional suffix morphemes. Both languages were forced to compensate for T-loss as a damaging linguistic change – the loss of T had vast ramifications that, while they appear on the surface to be economic changes based on linguistic efficiency in fact caused each language to spend much more effort than losing any single verb ending could have saved.

Conclusion

With the evidence provided as to the background of the British and Dutch sociopolitical scenes during the obsolescence of T, it is clear that the religious fractures in the Netherlands and England were the direct cause of T-loss in both English and Dutch. The differences between them are also clear – in England, T was stigmatized and marked, whereas in the Netherlands, V was heightened and widened to cover social domains it had normally not occupied. I also hope to have proved that the argument for deflection and economy in the verbal paradigm are unfounded. With religion as the driving factor in T-loss, and the known importance of religion in 16th century Europe, there are no real reasons why social stigmas and government language planning could not have completely caused the damaging loss of T.