Address in the Slavonic Languages

Address in the Slavonic LanguagesAuthor(s): Gerald StoneSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 491-505Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207536 .

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SEER, Vol. LV, No. 4, October 1977.

Address in the Slavonic

Languages

GERALD STONE

ONE of the tasks of sociolinguistics is to describe and understand ways in which information is exchanged by participants in face-to- face interaction, including ways in which they address one another. Systems of address consist of all the possible choices open to the speaker between linguistic elements referring to the addressee, i.e. the elements to which, if they are pronouns or verbs, the grammatical term 'second person' is applied. However, address forms also include nouns and noun phrases, and it is thus convenient to make a two- fold classification into 'nominal' and 'pronominal' address forms. In all second-person verbal forms the existence of the pronoun is implied even if not expressed.

It is of course possible for human communication to take place without the occurrence of any kind of address, but it would be difficult even to imagine any human society whose members did not address one another. In practice, people not only address one another, but in addition make choices between the available address forms thereby conveying indexal information. The fact that speakers of Slavonic languages make such choices is in no way exceptional, but the precise nature of these choices varies and probably con- stitutes a specific feature of each language.

It is only with the development of sociolinguistics as a distinct subject, however, that the general question of address has begun to be examined seriously. The classic study by Brown and Gilman, published in ig60,l based mainly on data from West European languages, showed the connection between choice of address pronoun and the sociological dimensions of power and solidarity. The following year, the fact that nominal address forms may follow a similar pattern emerged from a description of the address norms of American English, a language in which pronominal choice does not occur.2

Gerald Stone is a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. [This paper is to be presented to the VIlIth International Congress of Slavists, Zagreb, 1978.]

1 R. Brown and A. Gilman, 'The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity', in Style in Language, ed. T. A. Sebeok, Cambridge, Massachusetts, I960, pp. 253-76, reprinted in Language and Social Context, ed. Pier Paolo Giglioli, Harmondsworth, 1972, pp. 252-82.

2 R. Brown and M. Ford, 'Address in American English' (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62, New York, I96I, pp. 375-85), reprinted in Communication in Face to Face Interaction, ed. John Laver and Sandy Hutcheson, Harmondsworth, 1972, pp. 128-45.



492 GERALD STONE

The social semantics of pronominal usage in the Slavonic languages has received insufficient attention. Particularly striking is the fact that descriptive grammars often ignore altogether the question of criteria for making pronominal choices. Sometimes they do not even provide the basic linguistic information necessary to form second person sentences. The approach initiated by Brown and Gilman has, it is true, been used to good effect by Friedrich in his analysis of nineteenth-century Russian pronominal address,3 and several other studies have taken their work into account.4 Nevertheless, the research necessary to provide descriptions of contemporary address systems in terms of Brown and Gilman's conceptual framework has, so far as the Slavonic languages are concerned, yet to be undertaken. Sources for the study of address systems in the past are mainly restricted to literature (plays, novels, etc.), and Friedrich has shown how rich such sources can be.5 Even in relation to present-day usage literary sources have a certain value,6 but actual observation must always be regarded as primary.

The subject is potentially an extensive one, and in this article I shall refer only to a selection of its linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects in some of the Slavonic languages. In particular, I hope to show certain general trends in recent change and to indicate the potential for further research.

The purely linguistic problems alone are often considerable. This arises largely from the use of the second-person plural pronoun (Russian BbI, Polish wy, Slovene vi, etc.) to address one person-a feature known in one form or another to all the modern Slavonic languages. Following convention, I shall use the abbreviation V for this type of address and the abbreviation T for the historically singular type (Russian TbI, Polish ty, Slovene ti, etc.). In the use of V, the conflict between the real singularity of the person addressed and the grammatical plurality of the pronoun inevitably produces uncertainty and instability. It is largely the various ways of solving this

3 Paul Friedrich, 'Structural Implications of Russian Pronominal Usage', in Socio- linguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference I964, ed. William Bright, The Hague, I966, pp. 214-59, and id., 'Social Context and Semantic Feature: the Russian Pronominal Usage', in Directions in Sociolinguistics, ed. J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes, New York, 1972, pp. 270-300.

4 Notably M. Kocher, 'Second Person Pronouns in Serbo-Croatian' (Language, 43, Baltimore, 1967, pp. 725-41); H. Jachnow, 'Zur sozialen Implikation des Gebraluches von Anredepronomen (mit besonderer Berucksichtigung des Russischen)' (Zeitschrift fur slavische Philologie, 37, Heidelberg, 1973, pp. 343-55); G. G. Corbett, 'Address in Russian' (Journal of Russian Studies, 3I, Nottingham, 1976, pp. 3-15); A. D. Nakhimovsky, 'Social Distribution of Forms of Address in Contemporary Russian' (International Review of Slavic Linguistics, i, Edmonton, Alberta, 1976, pp. 79-I i8).

5 Jachnow, op. cit., p. 350, takes Friedrich to task for using these sources, asserting that they may reflect their authors' subjective view instead of objectively presenting linguistic reality. An alternative method of studying nineteenth-century usage, however, is not immediately apparent.

6 Brown and Ford, op. cit., used data from modern American plays.



ADDRESS IN THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES 493 conflict that determine the specific linguistic nature of this feature in each Slavonic language.

II

Polish pronominal address is quite distinct from that of the other Slavonic languages, owing to the fact that forms derived from the third person with pan, pani, etc. (here abbreviated as P) have to a considerable extent taken over from V forms. Nevertheless, V does exist in Polish, primarily, but not only, among rural dialect-speakers. It also has a limited tradition of use among certain speakers of the standard, but, although it has long had its advocates,7 official en- couragement of this type of address dates only from the end of the Second World War, since when it has even been institutionalized in the Polish United Workers Party. In theory, V is also the correct form for officials to use in their dealings with the public, though there is evidently a considerable discrepancy between theory and practice.8

The majority of urban Poles regard the use of V as artificial, and it has consequently suffered from grammatical instability. In the rural dialects, on the other hand, it is in no way artificial, and grammatical agreement of both verbs and adjectives is made con- sistently with masculine personal plural forms, regardless of whether a man or a woman is addressed.9 From the point of view of an urban Pole this is doubly absurd: in the first place, because plural forms are used with a single referent, and secondly, because masculine forms are used with a female referent. (The historical explanation of this, incidentally, is to be found in the fact that V evolved earlier than the masculine personal category.)'0

Nevertheless, according to what little linguistic advice is available on this subject1' correct standard usage also demands masculine personal plural agreement regardless of the sex of the addressee, e.g. Czy wyscie to napisali? Byliscie proszeni.. ., etc. In reality, however, this rule is frequently contravened, both singular (masculine and feminine) and plural (non-masculine personal) forms being found in use, e.g. Czy wyscie to napisal(a) ? or napisaly? In view of the fact that

7 See A. Bruckner, Ty-Wy-Pan. Kartka z dziejow prdo'nosci ludzkiej, Cracow, I9I6, p. 12.

8 I can find no evidence to support jachnow's view that Polish V is modelled on Russian and that it is used to express a specific solidarity separating Party members from all other groups (op. cit., p. 347 n.). On the indigenous nature of Polish V see Danuta Buttler, Halina Kurkowska, Halina Satkiewicz, Kultura jczyka polskiego, Warsaw, I971, p. 336, and K. Nitsch, 'Bylyscie, obywatelko!' (_J7zyk Polski, 3 1, Cracow, I951, pp. 93-4).

9 Cf. Nitsch, op. cit. 10 Witold Doroszewski, 0 kulture slowa. Poradnikjezykowy, vol. I, third edn., Warsaw,

1970, p- 4I. 11 In various guides to usage, e.g. Buttler et al., loc. cit.; Nitsch, op. cit.



494 GERALD STONE

the rule (like all matters concerning address) is given in none of the standard reference grammars published in Poland, this is scarcely surprising. Only Brooks takes the doubly exceptional course of (i) dealing with address forms at all, and (ii) recommending the use of non-masculine-personal ('nonvirile') verbal forms with V.12

In Czech the use of V is predominant and uncomplicated by any- thing resembling pan, pani, etc. (On the use of oni, however, see below.) The same conflict as in Polish between formal and semantic criteria arises, but its solution, in the standard language at least, is precisely the opposite of that in Polish. Standard usage thus produces sentences such as: Napsal jste. Napsala jste. Vy jste dobry. Vy jste dobra. At the same time, however, in non-standard 'popular' speech plural agreement may occur, e.g. Vy jste tam byli and Jak jste spokojeni?13 (addressing one person). In the nineteenth-century plural (grammatical) agreement of both verbs and adjectives with V was characteristic of Moravian dialects.14

Owing to the slightly lower degree of standardization in Upper Sorbian it is not entirely certain which type of agreement is to be regarded as standard. In the nineteenth century (and earlier) grammatical (plural) agreement in verbs was almost, but not quite, universal in Upper Sorbian, and the growth in semantic (singular) agreement which has occurred since that time is to a large extent, though not entirely, the result of the influence of the Czech literary language.15 'Volkstiimlich ist diese Konstruktion nicht' ('This con- struction is not a feature of popular speech'), said Swjela of semantic agreement,"6 and it remains somewhat artificial even to the present day. However, Sewc gives approval to it and it is now generally (but not always) preferred by users of the standard.17 The question of the agreement of adjectives is different, however, for here there has long been genuine fluctuation between semantic and grammatical agreement. Nowadays, in the standard language at least, semantic agreement is preferred.

In Russian, even in non-standard, varieties, the possibility of semantic agreement in the case of verbs is extremely remote. In standard Russian we have such forms as BbI nOlmII used to address either a man or a woman. The type Kyaa BbI nowsina? is described as

12 Maria Zagorska Brooks, Polish Reference Grammar, The Hague-Paris, 1975, p. 139. 13 Frantilek Trivnicek, Mluvnice spisovne cestiny, part II, 'Skladba', Prague, 1949, p. 412. 14 Georg Liebsch, Syntax der wendischen Sprache in der Oberlausitz, Bautzen, 1884, p. 47 n. 15 Gerald Stone, 'Pronominal Address in Sorbian' (Le'topis Instituta za serbski ludospyt,

series A, 23, Bautzen, 1976, pp. 182-91). 16 G. Schwela [B. gwjela], Vergleichende Grammatik der ober- und niedersorbischen Sprache,

Bautzen, I926, p. 30. 17 H. gewc, Gramatika hornjoserbskeje rece, vol. I, Bautzen, I968, pp. I72-3; Stone,

op. cit., p. 189.



ADDRESS IN THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES 495

'non-literary'18 and is probably rare even in dialects. But the in- congruity of semantic and grammatical principles does affect adjectival agreement. Both long and short form adjectives are used with V, but in the standard language short form adjectives agree grammatically (plural), while long form adjectives agree semantically (singular), e.g. BbI YMHbI but BbI YMHbIHI or BbI YMHaA. Long plural forms, such as BbI YMHbIe used in addressing one person, are con- sidered prostorecno.19 In non-standard Russian, in fact, grammatical agreement is taken to even further lengths, and in Griboyedov's day it was apparently possible not only for long adjectives but even for nouns in the complement to agree grammatically with V:

A BbI, cygapb, OTeU, BbI, CTpaCTHbIe K cHHaM,

XKeJiaio BaM pemaTb B HeBeReHbH cqaCTJIHBOM...

(Gore ot uma, Act IV, Scene I4)

BbI noBenIH ce6f HcnipaBHo.

JJaBHO rIOJ1KOBHHK4IK, a CJ)I4HTe HeBaBHo.

(Gore ot uma, Act II, Scene 5)

Uncertainty as to whether V demands semantic or grammatical agreement is endemic in the Slavonic languages. Even where one type or the other has been established as the only form acceptable as standard, another type, as we have seen, is usually known to exist in non-standard varieties. In Ukrainian, however, the standard is so tolerant that some authorities simply say that agreement with V is 'mainly' or 'usually' plural with verbs and singular with adjectives.20 But there are some authorities which take a firmer line in relation to verbs, and assert that only plural agreement is correct. Koval', for example, takes this line, but admits that the singular is used even by educated speakers.21 The use of the plural adjective is said to show 'a deeper esteem, a special deference, sometimes even a tinge of flattery'.22

In Slovene too the existence of both grammatical and semantic agreement is acknowledged. The written standard demands the use of the masculine plural with V regardless of the sex of the person or persons addressed (both verbs and adjectives), but semantic agree-

18 L. K. Graudina, V. A. Ickovic, L. P. Katlinskaja, Grammaticeskaja pravil'nost' russkoj reci. Opyt castotno-stilisticeskogo slovarja variantov, Moscow, 1976, p. 254.

19 Graudina et al., loc. cit.; Ju. F. Chaustova, 'Vy scastlivaja, vy scastlivy' (Russkaja rec', Moscow, I972, pp. I20-i); V. Ja. Derjagin, 'Uvazajemyj tovari?'!' (Russkaja re"', Moscow, i968, pp. 139-40).

20 I. K. Bilodid, ed., Sucasna ukrajins'ka literaturna mova, vol. II: 'Morfolohija', Kiev, I969, p. 285; I. H. Matvijas, Syntaksys zajmennykiv v ukrajins'kuj movi, Kiev, I962, p. 24.

21 A. P. Koval', Kul'tura ukrajins'koji movy, Kiev, I964, p. 90. 22 George Y. Shevelov, The Syntax of Modern Literary Ukrainian. The Simple Sentence,

The Hague, I963, p. 67.



496 GERALD STONE

ment is commonly used in speech and appears to be regarded as colloquial standard.23 Here, as in Polish, the conflict between grammar and reality affects not only the category of number but of gender too. For this reason, it appears that there is a particularly great temptation to use the feminine plural forms when addressing several women.

III Semantic agreement of the -1 participle demonstrates clearly the general problem of devising satisfactory descriptions and classifica- tions of semantic agreement, for it introduces an additional member to the paradigm, though the published grammars do not take full account of this fact. In the past tense of standard Czech, for example, we encounter such forms as: pfilel jste, prisla jste, vy jste prisel, vy jste pfila. These are unambiguously singular forms and belong to the singular paradigm, e.g.

i. pfiseljsem/pni`la jsem 2. (T) p rviselI js i /p fila js i

(V) pr'isel jstelpfisla jste 3 risev llPrisla.

In the conditional too the existence of the singular participle necessitates classification of V forms as singular. Equally, the forms pfisli jste, pfiSlly jste are unambiguously plural. Out of context, the pronoun itself vy and synthetic verbal forms (e.g. jste, dildte, etc.) including imperatives (such as bud'te) are ambiguous as to number.

Clearly, if we have a grammatical form pfisel jste/ phila jste we must be able to explain its paradigmatic relationship with pfisel jsi/pfislajsi, prislijste/pfirlyjste and with first and third person forms. The only possibility is to introduce a new grammatical category and classify prisel jste/pfilla jste as second person singular (V). The possibility of regarding these forms in Czech as synthetic24 only strengthens the argument that they must be found a place in the paradigm.

IV Some Slavonic languages have types of pronominal address involving forms used originally with only third person reference. The extension of third-person forms to second-person functions has produced a new type of grammatical homonymy not unlike that produced by V. The main difference is that such forms are ambiguous as to person

23 Joze Toporigic, Slovenska slovnica, Maribor, 1976, p. 326. 24 Frantigek Kopecny, 'Jeste k opisnemu pr6teritu v cegtin6' (Slovo a slovesnost, 19,

Prague, 1958, pp. 277-82).




rather than number, though ambiguity as to person, number and gender is possible.

It is in Polish that pseudo-third-person address figures most prominently, and Polish is the only Slavonic language in which it is normal among the majority of speakers of the standard language. In their usage non-familiar address is realized mainly by the words pan (masculine singular), panowie (masculine plural), pani (feminine singular), panie (feminine plural), and pan'stwo (mixed-sex plural), accompanied by verbal forms which in other grammatical contexts have third-person reference. For example: Pan wie, Pani wie, Pan'stwo wiedzq, etc. (all translated into English as 'You know'). Polish grammars and dictionaries treat pan, panowie, pani, panie, and panistwo as nouns, but their real meanings in address, and also in certain third-person reference contexts where their use is determined by social criteria (e.g. Pan wie 'He knows' in preference to Wie or On wie), indicate that they are sometimes nouns and sometimes pronouns. Doroszewski recognized this fact,25 though neither his26 nor any other Polish grammar makes reference to them under the heading 'Pronouns'.

All P utterances are ambiguous as to person: e.g. Pan wie may have second or third person reference, and may be translated into English as 'You know', 'He knows', or 'The man knows'. This means that in actual address situations ambiguity of reference can only be avoided to some extent by body position, gestures, intonation, etc. This difficulty is partly offset by the fact that there is no ambiguity as to number or gender.

Just as V has resulted in various types of compromise between forms unmarked as to number and unambiguously singular forms, so Polish has not only P proper (totally ambiguous as to person), but also certain compromise forms in wllich the address pronouns pan, panowie, pani, panie, pan'stwo are used with verbal forms which are otherwise characteristic of familiar address (and thus totally un- ambiguous as to person). We may thus encounter not only such sentences as:

Co robisz? 'What are you doing?' (T) (sg.) and: Co robicie? 'id.' (T) (pl.) but also: Co pan robisz? 'id.' (compromise sg.) and: Co panowie robicie? 'id.' (compromise pl.)

Similarly: Co pani robisz? Co panie robicie? Co pan'stwo robicie? The fact that codifying works have little to say on such matters makes it

25 Witold Doroszewski, 0 kulturc slowa. Poradnik jczykowy, vol. II, Warsaw, I968, PP. 47 and 24I.

26 Id., Podstawy gramatyki polskiej, Warsaw, 1952.



498 GERALD STONE

difficult to assess which address forms are to be regarded as belonging to the standard language, but it is clear that attitudes to these compromise forms have changed since the beginning of the twentieth century. Writing at the time of the First World War, Los and Bruckner did not condemn them, though they undoubtedly regarded them as casual or familiar.27 More recently, however, they have become distinctly less acceptable to speakers of standard Polish,28 but it is important to distiniguish between the singular compromise type (e.g. Co pan robisz?) and the plural compromise type (e.g. Co panstwo robicie?). The singular is nowadays definitely non-standard, while the plural lies somewhere on the border between standard and non-standard and may be used colloquially by speakers of the standard. Brook's attitude to the plural compromise as equivalent or even (with panstwo) preferable to plural P proper is unusual.29

Polish also has certain related types of pronominal address in which pan, panowie, etc. are replaced by other words such as ksiqdz 'priest', kolega 'colleague', siostra 'sister' (to address a nun), etc., and also kinship terms such as mama 'mummy', tata 'daddy', babcia 'grandma', etc. Thus children may address older kin with sentences such as: Co mama powiedziala? (instead of Co powiedzia1as'?).

In the western Ukraine a P type of address appears to have survived to the present day, though information on this point is scarce. It is, however, not part of modern literary Ukrainian and is undoubtedly much rarer nowadays than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century. It may take a singular or plural verb, e.g. AK naH KaKe or AK naH KaKYTh 'as you say'. There appear to be no descriptions of this type of address apart from a passing reference in Shevelov's study of Ukrainian syntax.30 It is, however, well demonstrated in the works of certain Ukrainian writers, notably those of Ivan Franko. It is possible for V and P forms to be mixed, i.e. for one participant in a given dyadic relationship to be addressed with both V and p.31

Another type of address found in several Slavonic languages involves the use of forms coinciding with those used in third person plural reference. This type is, so far as I know, restricted among the Slavonic languages to Polish (where it is known inter alia as trojenie) ,32

Czech (onikani), Slovak (onikanie), and Slovene (onikanje). I shall use

27 J. Los, 'Od ty do pan' (J7zyk Polski, 3, I916, pp. 9-IO); Bruckner, op. cit., pp. 9-IO. 28 Doroszewski, 0 kultur. . ., vol. II, pp. 83-4; Stanislaw Westfal, Teka jfzykowa,

Glasgow, 1975, p. 337. 29 Brooks, op. cit., pp. I35-7. 30 Shevelov, op. cit., p. 69. 31 I am obliged to George Tulloch for drawing my attention to instances of this usage

in the works of Franko. 32 Alfred Zareba, 'Czasowniki okre9lajjce spos6b zwracania siQ do drugiej osoby'

(Jczyk Polski, 54, 1974, pp. 378-88).




the abbreviation 0 to refer to this phenomenon generally. It is commonly supposed to be the result of German and Hungarian interference,33 and the geographical location of the languages and dialects where it is found appears on the whole to support this view.34 At the same time it is worth noting that in Sorbian, where the degree of bilingualism and German interference is particularly high, O is totally unknown. In none of the four languages where it is found (or was found until recently) can 0 be regarded as belonging to the standard language. However, its position in relation to the standard language is difficult to establish and may have varied from one language to another. According to Mistrik, the use of V in Slovak 'to an older person accustomed to onikanie' is a sign of dis- respect,35 but it is not clear whether this relates to dyads in which both participants are dialect speakers or whether a speaker of the standard language may be expected to use 0 in certain circumstances.

Where 0 exists (or existed) it often forms part of a triple system in which T, V and 0 are all in operation together. It is thus possible to distinguish (in Czech, for example) between jak se mas? (T), jak se mate? (V) and jak se maji? (0), each being exclusively appropriate in a particular social context. It is not quite clear whether 0 includes only those utterances in which the third person plural verb is used alone (e.g. Slk 'Pain farar-a co budu vecerat' ?')36 or with the third person plural masculine pronoun oni (e.g. Slk '. . . a oni kde ustavali, kisasonka?').37 Third person plural verbs may also be found used with titles (e.g. Sln '. . . kakor milostljiva gospa pravijo . . .'), but it may be that this is to be treated as a separate phenomenon from o.38

There are also certain forms of pronominal address involving the use of third person singular verbs. In Slovak this is nowadays old- fashioned and rare, but it was formerly used to address social superiors: e.g. 'A to azda pain sef nechce'.39 In Czech, according to Travnicek, a form of address known as onkani and coinciding in form with the third person singular is still in use.40 It seems to occur mainly in utterances addressing children and young persons to convey a degree of solidarity midway between T and V, e.g. Vzal si!

33 A. V. Isacenko, Grammaticeskij stroj russkogo jazyka v sopostavlenii s slovackim, part II: 'Morfologija', Bratislava, I960, p. 414.

34 The only Polish dialects affected are those of Silesia and Orawa (Zarqba, op. cit., p. 384).

35 '. . . vykat' starsej osobe, zvyknutej na onikanie, je znakom neu'cty.' Jozef Mistrik, gtylistika slovenskehojazyka, Bratislava, I970, p. 260.

36 JozefRuziika, 'Plural uicty v Kukucinovom diele' (Slovenskd rec, 22, Bratislava, I957, p. 86).

37 Ladislav Dvonc, Gejza Horak, Frantisek Miko, Jozef Mistrik, Jan Oravec, Jozef Ruzicka, Milan Urbancok, Morfologia slovenskihojazyka, Bratislava, I966, p. 517.

38 Cf. the Ukrainian type AiK naH ca)XYTb mentioned above. 39 Dvonc et al., loc. cit. 40 TrAvnicek, Op. cit., p. 434.



500 GERALD STONE

(or Vzala si!) 'help yourself!' (midway between Vezmi si! and Vezmlte si!). This type also existed in Slovene in the nineteenth century and was known as onkanje. It is doubtful whether it survives to the present day.41

V

Turning to the matter of the social functions of pronominal address, it is immediately obvious that the question as to which forms are appropriate to which speakers in which contexts has not achieved much prominence in Slavonic linguistic studies. The rules of pronominal address form part of the linguistic and social intuition of native speakers, but descriptions of this usage are extremely rare and fragmentary. Often the nearest thing we have to a description is scattered here and there in the pages of popular guides to etiquette, but, valuable as they are, such sources usually provide only a very rough guide to social acceptability.42

Nevertheless, it is possible, even on an impressionistic basis, to indicate some of the social criteria involved and also to form a picture of some of the directions in which these criteria have recently changed and are still changing. Brown and Gilman observed that in French, German, Italian, and many other languages they had studied there had been a very distinct move away from the power semantic (T being given, V received) and an extension of the solidarity semantic among power equals (mutual T) at the expense of the non-solidary mutual V. They also noted a decline in expressive shifts between T and V.43 In at least some of the Slavonic languages recent trends appear to have been similar to those noted by Brown and Gilman.

The power semantic is well demonstrated in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature in several of the Slavonic languages. Josip Jurcic's novel Deseti brat, for example, published in i866-7, contains many examples of asymmetric usage in Slovene. In the first few pages a conversation takes place between a doctor (who gives T and receives V) and an inkeeper (who gives V and receives T). In social relationships of this kind such usage would not occur nowadays.

Many changes have occurred within living memory and may be elicited from informants. In Poland the non-reciprocal (P/T) power semantic has declined recently and steadily until today it is

41 Toporific, op. cit., p. 325, describes it as 'starinsko' ('old-fashioned'). Some informants believe it may survive in very remote villages.

42 There is, for example, a certain amount of advice on pronominal etiquette in Jan Kamyczek, Grzecznose na co dzie?i, 6th edn., Warsaw, 1974, and Michail Chodakov, Kak ne nado sebja vesti, Moscow, I972.

43 Brown and Gilman, op. cit., p. 280.



ADDRESS IN THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES 50I

only fully operational in relations between adults and children under the age of sixteen (or thereabouts) and slightly older in the school setting. In rural areas, however, where the contrast is between V and T (not P and T) and the predominant power attribute is age, non-reciprocal usage may be more common than in the towns.

Before I939 in Poland domestic servants and others of similar social status were often addressed with non-reciprocal T. In the nineteenth century it is probable that this convention was much more widespread. As late as the 1930S there were some households in which even the children used T to servants of any age. There also existed at that time the practice-then thought less discriminatory than T, but now totally rejected as 'undemocratic'-of using to servants address forms of the P type, but replacing pan, pani with the forename, e.g. Czy Zosia gotuje obiad? 'Are you cooking lunch, Zosia ?' (literally 'Is Zosia cooking lunch ?'), or by the name of the servant's post, e.g. Czy gosposia gotuje obiad? (literally 'Is the housekeeper cooking lunch?').

Non-reciprocal address survives in Poland not only between children and adults outside the family, but also to some extent within certain families where the children receive T but address older kin with kinship terms functioning as pronouns (mama, tata, babcia, dziadek, etc.) together with verbs coinciding with those used in third person reference, e.g. Tata powiedzial, ze. . . 'You said that...' (literally 'Daddy said that.. .'). This usage lasts for life, even after the children have grown up. No information is available as to how widespread this usage is. It is certain that it was never universal, but in the early part of the twentieth century it was undoubtedly much more common than it is now. In a substantial majority of urban families nowadays mutual T is used between younger and older generations.

Non-reciprocal usage between younger and older kin is a feature of several Slavonic languages which appears to have been commoner in the past than at the present. In Ukrainian, however, the use of V to parents and other older kin is still widespread and in some areas is even extended to elder brothers and sisters." Ukrainians are generally aware of the fact that they use mutual T less than Russians, and that for them similarity of age is a particularly important criterion for its suitability.

In Russian there has been a marked decline in non-reciprocal usage in all kinds of power relationships. This development has its own specifically Russian background and motivation. The replace- ment of T by V to address subordinates began at the end of the nineteenth century, but it was at that time still a matter for com-

44 Matvijas, loc. cit.



502 GERALD STONE

ment; cf. ...MHe 6buIO KaK-TO He no ce6e B 3TOM He6onbinoM YIOTHOM

goMe, B KOTOpOM He 6bIZO Ha CTeHax oneorpa4nHHi H npHcnyre rOBOPHJIH

ONbI))...' (A. P. Chekhov, Dom s mezoninom, I. First published in I896).

By the early twentieth century the realization that non-reciprocal usage was an aspect of social degradation had begun to dawn among industrial workers. One of the demands of the strikers in the Lena gold-fields in I9I2 was that the management should address workers with V.45 In the army there were regulations naming the ranks (officers down to sub-ensign) to whom V was to be used, and also those (all other ranks) to whom T was to be used by superiors.46 These regulations were changed by Prikaz No. i of i March I9I7,

which ordered V to be used to all ranks. Subsequent rules made under the Bolsheviks confirmed this, but old habits die hard and it is reported that even to the present time the T of power survives to some extent in the Soviet Army.47

The campaign against non-reciprocal usage has been led by the writer V. Ja. Kantorovic, and following public discussion largely provoked by him in the I 96os instructions for workers to be addressed with V have been widely included in local work regulations.48 Nowadays the dominant ethic demands the use of V to every adult stranger, including subordinates, but the non-reciprocal T of power is probably more alive in Russia than in some other Slavonic countries. This is only one of many ways in which the semantics of pronominal address vary from one Slavonic language to another.

The social semantics of 0 is a particularly elusive subject, but the fact that this type of address is in rapid decline seems to be beyond dispute. It appears always to have been characteristically non- reciprocal. In fact, I have been unable to discover whether mutual O ever existed. In Slovakia 0 was still widespread in the countryside until the Second World War and survives sporadically to the present day. It used to occur (and may still occur) in the family in non- reciprocal usage between generations, but is now being replaced in this function by mutual T. In other functions Slovak 0 is being replaced by mutual V. It is worth noting that Polish 0 has a rather different function from its Slovak counterpart, for in the Polish countryside non-reciprocal T/V is normal between generations, whereas 0 is restricted to addressing a select category of people who

45 P. A. Cernych, 'Zametki ob upotreblenii mestoimenija vy vmesto ty v kacestve formy vezlivosti v russkom literaturnom jazyke XVIII-XIX vekov' (Uconyje zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, vyp. 137, Trudy kafedry russkogo jazyka, kniga 2, p. 107).

46 Cernych, loc. cit. 47 By Naknimovsky, op. cit. 48 See Bernard Comrie and Gerald Stone, The Russian Language Since the Revolution,

Oxford, 1977, Chap. 7: 'Modes of Address and Speech Etiquette'.




are felt to merit special respect (the parish priest, village school- master, etc.).49

Non-reciprocal address between generations is also known to Sorbian (in the form T/V). In Lower Sorbian it may even at one time have been universal and in Upper Sorbian it was undoubtedly widespread. Here too, however, there has been a recent swing towards mutual T.50

VI

Finally, turning to the question of nominal address, it is immediately obvious that the use of personal names and titles has social correlates which are similar to those of pronominal forms. Nominal and pronominal forms of address therefore often co-occur, but there are many discrepancies too. There is, for example, a general tendency (but no more than that) for the use of the first name, especially of hypocristics, to co-occur with T. The language in which this tendency is greatest is Polish, and this fact is reflected in the synonymy of the terms po imieniu 'on first name terms' and na ty 'on T terms', both of which mean the use of both first name and T. It is therefore illogical to use P with the forename. Nevertheless, utterances like 'Jerzyku, do pana telefon!' do occur. Going to the other extreme, the likelihood of a title co-occurring with T is remote, but in exceptional circumstances even this combination is possible, e.g. Czeic Twojej pamifci, Drogi Panie Profesorze!51 In Russian, by contrast, the use of the forename, including hypocoristics, with V is quite common, though forename with T is even commoner. In Ukrainian the likelihood of V co-occurring with forename alone (or hypocoristic) is probably greater than in Russian owing to general Ukrainian frugality in the use of T but not of forenames.

There are few, if any, combinations of nominal and pronominal address forms which can be regarded as totally impossible. Indeed, the fact that T/V and T/P systems are complemented by, but not strictly correlated with, systems of nominal address makes possible a greater degree of subtlety in the reflection of social relationships than would otherwise be so. But the combination of T with the compound pan, pani etc. + surname or title (such as pan Kowalski, pani doktor, etc.) is of very low probability in ordinary circumstances. The same is true of similar combinations with Czech pan, pani+

49 Zareba, op. cit., p. 384. The proportion of Polish-speaking territory in which 0 occurs is very small; cf. n. 34.

50 Stone, op. cit., pp. I90-I. 51 From Professor M. Szymczak's oration at the funeral of Professor Witold Doro-

szewski: 'Przem6wenia wygloszone na pogrzebie Prof. Dra Witolda Doroszewskiego' (Poradnik JNzykowy, Warsaw, 1976, p. I o8).



504 GERALD STONE

surname or title, and of those using Slovene gospod, gospa, gospodi6na, Sorbian knjez, knjeni, knje7:na, and similar titles in other Slavonic languages. Among the rarer types of co-occurrence in Russian are T with forename + patronymic (though this is undoubtedly characteristic of a certain type of relationship) and V with patronymic alone.

In connection with the social changes affecting the Slavonic languages in the twentieth century several types of nominal address have been replaced or have simply disappeared. Aristocratic and administrative titles, such as those in the Russian Table of Ranks have lost their traditional functions, though they are remembered and may be used ironically.52 At the same time new titles such as Russian TOBapHiu, rpaxaaHrH, rpaxvaHKa, Polish towarzysz, oby- watel(ka), Slovene tovaris(ica), Czech soudruh, soudruzka, have come to the fore, though there has been a general movement away from the use of titles and the innovations are less numerous than those that have fallen out of circulation. Polish panna (formerly added to the names of unmarried women) has become archaic and been replaced by pani (formerly attached to the names of married women only).

VII

I have been able to show no more than some of the salient features of nominal and pronominal address in some of the Slavonic languages, including an indication of certain recent trends. The conflict between semantic and grammatical agreement with V, which is endemic in the Slavonic languages, is resolved by each of them in its own way. In addition, though information on such matters is scarce, it is evident that both regional and social variation of this feature occur within each Slavonic speech community. In the case of Serbo-Croat Kocher has succeeded in correlating variation in pronominal usage to other social indexes. Such correlations undoubtedly exist elsewhere in Slavonic countries, but their description and interpretation require field-work. Meanwhile, a good deal of useful information can be obtained from the study of written sources.

The swing away from non-reciprocal usage corresponds closely to Brown and Gilman's findings. As to the possible drift away from expressive variation, we shall only be able to assess the trend in Slavonic languages when we have a clearer picture of such variation

52 Kantorovic reports an incident (evidently in the early I96os) when an old workman, on being addressed with T by a chief engineer, replied angrily 'ECTE, Bal1e npeBOCXOAH6- TenbcOTO!', touching his cap: Vladimir Kantorovic, Ty i Vy (Zametki pisatelja), Moscow, 1966, P. 49.




in the recent past. Consideration of Friedrich's picture of nineteenth- century Russian pronominal address might encourage the view that there was indeed more switching between modes then than occurs now. But Nakhimovsky, reporting on present-day usage, also gives examples of situational switching. This is only one of many aspects of Slavonic address systems, past and present, which promise a fruitful field for linguistic and sociolinguistic research.



Address in the Slavonic Languages

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