Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Colonial lag, colonial innovation or simply language change?
- 2 Compound verbs
- 3 The formation of the preterite and the past participle
- 4 Synthetic and analytic comparatives
- 5 Phonology and grammar
- 6 Prepositions and postpositions
- 7 Argument structure
- 8 Reflexive structures
- 9 Noun phrase modification
- 10 Nominal complements
- 11 Non-finite complements
- 12 The present perfect and the preterite
- 13 The revived subjunctive
- 14 The mandative subjunctive
- 15 The conditional subjunctive
- 16 Tag questions
- 17 The pragmatics of adverbs
- 18 How different are American and British English grammar? And how are they different?
- 19 New departures
- Bibliography
- Index
16 - Tag questions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Colonial lag, colonial innovation or simply language change?
- 2 Compound verbs
- 3 The formation of the preterite and the past participle
- 4 Synthetic and analytic comparatives
- 5 Phonology and grammar
- 6 Prepositions and postpositions
- 7 Argument structure
- 8 Reflexive structures
- 9 Noun phrase modification
- 10 Nominal complements
- 11 Non-finite complements
- 12 The present perfect and the preterite
- 13 The revived subjunctive
- 14 The mandative subjunctive
- 15 The conditional subjunctive
- 16 Tag questions
- 17 The pragmatics of adverbs
- 18 How different are American and British English grammar? And how are they different?
- 19 New departures
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Preliminaries
Tag questions are a well-known phenomenon in British and American English, but there have been some changes in their form and use since the classic descriptions of the first half of the twentieth century. The aim of this chapter is to outline the general system of tag questions in the two major varieties of English and to point to some differences between them. Firstly, though, it will be helpful to clarify some basic issues.
BrE and AmE each embrace a wide range of varieties of English, varying according to such factors as the precise geographical region, the social group and the social situation of the language users involved, as well as the complex question of spoken as against written language. All linguists are restricted by the data available to them, and the present writer is no exception. This chapter will take BrE, more specifically English English, as its starting point, but will attempt to highlight contrasts with AmE, paying particular attention to some recent changes in BrE, which may partly reflect American influence.
Ideally the sources for studying a particular linguistic phenomenon should include both naturally occurring texts and the intuitions of native speakers. As a native speaker of English English, the present writer has been able to follow recent developments in this variety at first hand.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- One Language, Two Grammars?Differences between British and American English, pp. 306 - 323Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
- 11
- Cited by