Second-person pronouns and their relation with nominal forms of address in Late Middle English and Early Modern English personal letters

Generally, little attention has been given to the role of selected linguistic and extralinguistic factors in the use of forms of address (Walker 2007). Therefore, the major theoretical concern behind this research is to examine quantitatively and qualitatively, based on selected letters from the CEECS corpus (1998), the influence of social stratification and family relations on the usage of pronominal forms of address. Apart from that, it also analyses the interrelation between second-person pronouns and nominal forms of address in Late Middle English and Early Modern English.