Grammaticalization of pronouns ‘you’ and ‘Sie’ in English and German

Abstract

The research aims to prove the similarity of the processes of grammaticalization of personal pronouns, used as a polite form of address to one person, in two Germanic languages of different structure, English and German. Scientific originality of this research lies in the fact that the grammaticalization paths of the English and German pronouns ‘you’ and ‘Sie’ have been studied for the first time, with their etymology being analyzed and grammaticalization mechanisms being compared. The research findings have shown that the processes of grammaticalization of the pronouns under study are similar and caused by the same mechanisms: the desemanticization of original lexical items and the context extension. In both languages, as a result of grammaticalization, no changes have been identified on the morphological and phonetic levels. Grammaticalization caused the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘Sie’ to be used as a polite form of address to one person, spelt and pronounced as second- and third-person singular and plural pronouns ‘you’ and ‘sie’ ‘she, they’. The research proves the similarity of the processes of grammaticalization of the personal pronouns under study in two languages of different structure belonging to the same language group. This similarity is due to their common meaning.