Singular YOU WAS/WERE variation and English normative grammars in the eighteenth century
- Author(s): Mikko Laitinen
- Source: The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800) , pp 199-217
- Publication Date April 2009
This article investigates the sociolinguistic processes in singular you was and you were variation in eighteenth-century correspondence. The focus is on the sociolinguistic mechanisms in operation when one variant was established as a standard, high-prestige variant, and the other as a non-standard form. The data are drawn from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension and complemented with evidence from A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. The results show that you was peaks before the mid-eighteenth century and gradually becomes a socially stigmatized linguistic marker, as evinced in normative comments in grammars. Men lead the change: the form peaks earlier among men than women who resort to using the were variant longer than men.
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