Lone pronoun tags in Early Modern English: ProTag constructions in the dramas of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare

Abstract

Recent research into right-dislocated pronouns has provided details of the form and functions of lone pronoun tag (ProTag) constructions in Present-day British English. In this article, we present the first systematic investigation of ProTag constructions in an earlier variety, Early Modern English. Using as our corpus the dramatic works of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare – writers already known to make use of tag questions in their works – we identified and analysed ProTag constructions. Our findings reveal that ProTag constructions in Early Modern English differ from their Present-day British English equivalents with respect to possible functions: in the earlier variety ProTag constructions could have a ‘Question’ function, the same as tag questions. We also found the relative frequency of demonstrative ProTags compared to personal ProTags to be significantly different: personal ProTags are far more frequently attested than demonstrative ProTags in our corpus of Early Modern English drama texts; this is the reverse of what has been found for Present-day British English. We propose that a key factor in the observed change is extension of the types of referents that demonstrative ProTags can have. This study offers a new perspective on ProTag constructions, their classification and development.

Computing Book Parts with EEBO-TCP

“…Literary critics, for instance, may easily find their topic of research through keyword searches, even in non-canonical texts; researchers at the Oxford English Dictionary routinely use EEBO-TCP to antedate the earliest known usage of words; linguists may access early modern language untouched by later editors. 27 Besides such word-level studies, however, researchers are increasingly using EEBO-TCP for larger scale projects, drawing conclusions from quantitative or computational resultsa trend that is sure to increase since the 2020 data release. The Early Print project, for instance, has begun the process of making this data suitable for linguistic analysis by adding linguistic metadata to every word in most of the corpus.…”