Study on English tag questions

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sweetbaby

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i am doing a research about the english tag question at the moment.
the copus i used is BNC
what i focus in my paper is those exceptions in the formation of tag question.
my tutor advised me to also take account of the intonation, which gives me some difficulties to go on.
anybody could give me some suggestions and give me some explanation about the usage of tag question in english?
Merci beaucoup!
 
If you don't have audio-files linked to individual texts, you can hardly work on the prosodic features of the tag questions.

It is a good idea to look at the contextual clues to figure out the functions of tag questions in BNC.

Do you use the entire BNC or the spoken part of the corpus to study tag questions?
 
what i use is only the trial sample of BNC, i think it is called SARA or not?
since i dont have the audio data, the intonation of course isnt the focus. but it seems that the intonation still has some influences on the formation of tag question.
what I deal with in my paper is the formation of question tags attached to the imperative, the complex sentence etc. I also find a great number of tag questions which have different auxiliaries or subject between the two constituent parts.
I tried to give some explanations to such minor exceptions, but it is not so easy.
you got some ideas? 3x.
ps. i do my paper in france and i must finish it in french; that's another problem to me.
 
Quirk et al (1985: 1119-1125) provide a very good analysis of English tag questions.
 
i think i've already consulted it. anyway, thanks very much.
seems that there is not many reference on this topic!
its really an intriguing topic, which makes me confused.
 
回复：english tag question

The following paper has a corpus-based discussion of tags (you can check out the other work by the same authors, too.):

Spoken Grammar: What Is It and How Can We Teach It?
McCarthy, Michael; Carter, Ronald
ELT Journal, 1995, 49, 3, July, 207-218

Abstract The teaching of grammar is traditionally based on written examples & on a prescriptive approach to "correct" English. It is asserted that more grammatical choices must be offered in order for learners of English to function communicatively in written & spoken contexts. Examples from a U of Nottingham corpus of informal & conversational language illustrate a variety of grammatical forms used by native speakers from different social, cultural, & geographical backgrounds. Clause tails, past continuous reporting verbs, frequent use of the expression tend to, tags, & switching between will & be going to are observed. It is believed that illustrative, interactional, & inductive learning may be more appropriate than the presentation, practice, & production approaches adopted in traditional grammar books.
 
回复：english tag question

以下是引用 sweetbaby 在 2006-4-19 20:19:29 的发言：
what i use is only the trial sample of BNC, i think it is called SARA or not?
since i dont have the audio data, the intonation of course isnt the focus. but it seems that the intonation still has some influences on the formation of tag question.
what I deal with in my paper is the formation of question tags attached to the imperative, the complex sentence etc. I also find a great number of tag questions which have different auxiliaries or subject between the two constituent parts.
I tried to give some explanations to such minor exceptions, but it is not so easy.
you got some ideas? 3x.
ps. i do my paper in france and i must finish it in french; that's another problem to me.
Click to expand...

http://view.byu.edu/
This interface serves as a portal to the entire BNC database, but the BNC sampler (http://thetis.bl.uk/lookup.html) only produces maximally 50 hits for each search.

BTW: Tom Cobb's Page has a French version.
http://www.lextutor.ca/
 
A master thesis -

Application of Politeness Theory to Tag Questions Translated from English to Chinese
Authored by Chia-ling Chang
Supervised by Dr.Josef Szakos

Download at the bottom of
http://ethesys.lib.pu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0217106-034213
 
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