Распространение вежливого местоимения «Вы» в XVIII веке в русском языке: между грамматикой и прагматикой
The Spread of the Polite Pronoun “Vy” in 18th Century Russian: Between Grammar and Pragmatics

Summary/Abstract: It is known that in Russian the 2nd person plural allocutive pronoun vy began to spread as a politeness marker only towards the 18th century. Before, this form was limited to diplomatic correspondence: apart from that, only the 2nd person singular allocutive pronoun ty was used. In this paper we intend to analyse, both at morphological and pragmatic level, how did the polite pronominal vy form spread in Russian during the 18th century. We will distinguish two moments: 1) the age of Peter the Great, when the use of vy was still irregular (the mixed use of vy and ty was a frequent phenomenon) and the pronoun was perceived as a sign of good manners (oriented towards the etiquette which was common in most European countries at that time); 2) the following period when the use of vy became progressively regular and in addition to the first, basically “symmetrical”, use, another, “asymmetrical” use, based on the semantics of power, appeared.

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