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:
1. Preface; 2. 1. Diachronic perspectives on address term systems: Introduction (by Jucker, Andreas H.); 3. 2. The T/V pronouns in later Middle English Literature (by Burnley, David); 4. 3. The use of tu/vus in the Anglo-Norman Seinte Resureccion (by Hunt, Tony); 5. 4. "And if ye wol nat so, my lady sweete, thanne preye I thee, [...].": Forms of address in Chaucer's Knight's Tale (by Honegger, Thomas); 6. 5. From pragmatics to grammar: Tracing the development of respect in the history of the German pronouns of address (by Simon, Horst J.); 7. 6. The system of Czech bound address forms until 1700 (by Betsch, Michael); 8. 7. Family first: Address and subscription formulae in English family correspondence from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century (by Nevala, Minna); 9. 8. Spanish forms of address in the sixteenth century (by Bentivoglio, Paola); 10. 9. The co-occurrence of nominal and pronominal address froms in the Shakespeare Corpus: Who says thou or you to whom? (by Busse, Ulrich); 11. 10. Pronouns and nominal address in Shakespearean English: A socio-affective markings system in transition (by Mazzon, Gabriella); 12. 11. Pronominal usage in Shakespeare: Between sociolinguistics and conversation analysis (by Stein, Dieter); 13. 12. You and thou in Early Modern English dialogues: Patterns of usage (by Walker, Terry); 14. 13. Rectifying a standard deficiency: Second-person pronominal distinction in varieties of English (by Hickey, Raymond); 15. 14. Demonstrative pronouns in addressing and referring Finnish (by Seppanen, Eeva-Leena); 16. 15. The German address system: Binary and scalar at once (by Hickey, Raymond); 17. Index of subjects; 18. Index of names; 19. Index of languages