TNTL 119/3

Amand Berteloot

Van du naar ghi
Waarom het pronomen du uit het Nederlands verdween

Abstract -- The replacement of the pronoun du by ghi was an important innovation in the system of Dutch forms of address. However, still very little is known about what caused this development. The article shows that the elimination of du cannot be just the result of a semantic-pragmatic development. The loss of du also is connected to the morphology of the finite verb and with the phonological form of the pronoun, as well as with its inflectional forms. Due to a combination of these circumstances, du had practically disappeared by the end of the 15th century.

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