Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society John Henderson, MarieEve Ritz and Celeste Rodríguez Louro (eds) 2013 www.als.asn.au Towards a linguistic typology of address pronouns in Europe – past and present JOHN HAJEK,HEINZ LKRETZENBACHER &ROBERT LAGERBERG The University of Melbourne The appropriate choice of address pronouns is an essential pragmatic practice that governs interpersonal relations across much of Europe although it remains unknown to date for how many European languages this is the case. This paper reports on issues in address in European languages and on a pilot typological survey currently under way of address pronouns in Europe, focusing on not only identifying the forms used, but also their pragmatic use, historical sources and change, shared features across areogenetic space, and their synchronic grammatical properties. We discuss specific aspects and data relevant to these issues to highlight the potential complexity of European address pronoun systems. Initial results presented here suggest that our typological approach is also useful in identifying subtle areal phenomena  exemplified here by what we call a ‘submerged’ pattern of address through language contact, i.e. the spread of 3rd person plural for singular address, calqued on German Sie (3pl). 1. Address pronouns in European languages and address research since 1960 The way people address one another, including peripheral and related phenomena such as greetings and introductions, features prominently in establishing and maintaining social relationships by linguistic means. The choice of address form is a way of positioning both speaker and addressee in their mutual social field of interaction (cf. Carbaugh 1996: 143; Svennevig 1999: 19), thus marking a specific social distance between the interlocutors. 1.1 Address research since 1960 More than fifty years ago, the publication of Brown and Gilman’s "The pronouns of power and solidarity" (1960) proved seminal for our understanding of address pronoun use. It set the tone for much of the subsequent sociolinguistic research on address, with its focus both on a small number of Western European languages and on pronominal and deictic address (rather than nominal address and vocatives), and its formulation of a wellknown analytical model. Brown and