Indexing religious identity in the French Basque Country: Toward a theory of pronominal shift

Laburpena

This paper argues that the loss of T (hi) in Basque can be attributed, in part, to the religious identities linked to T and V between the 16^th and 19^th centuries. Throughout this period, France —including its Basque-speaking regions— was embroiled in religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. Protestants attempted to win converts by translating the New Testament in 1571, and a fragment of the Old Testament around 1700; no Catholic version of the Bible was published until 1865. I show that the Protestant texts used hi with single addressees; the Catholic texts used zu, using hi primarily to show disdain. By the end of the 18^th century, however, Catholicism had won out over Protestantism in France, thereby inscribing hi with a negative cast that contributed to its loss over time.