Lexical and grammatical characteristics of tag-questions (from the texts of the Late Period of the age of enlightenment)

Merkuryeva Natalia Yuryevna

The article deals with the variety of tag-questions from old texts. The linguistic material is selected from the plays and novels written by A. Murphy, R. Sheridan, S. Foote, H. Fielding, F. Burney, T. Smollett, etc. during the period of 1740-1760. Three groups of tag-questions are distinguished. Lexical content of the tags, the forms of words and word order in them, the using of punctuation marks between the anchor and the tag, the arrangement of the tags within the anchors are under analysis. The structures are compared with the similar ones from the texts of Renaissance period and the Early Period of the Age of Enlightenment which have been discussed.

Keywords:historical syntax of the English language, tag-question, tag-questions typology, language change