How ‘Systemic’ Is a Large Corpus of English?
Prof. Dr. Robert de Beaugrande
Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče
and
Faculteta za humanistične študije
Univerza na Primorskem
The term ‘system’ has been so protean and mutable in its uses and meanings that we might do well to start by exploring it. According to the older data in my English Prose Corpus (hereafter EPC), it seems to have originally flourished in 18th and 19th century discourses about socially distinctive organisations; I find ‘system of’ frequently collocating with ‘government’, ‘regulation’, ‘administration’, ‘management’, ‘education’, and so on. In the contemporary British National Corpus (hereafter BNC), collocations with ‘system of’ inhabit organisational discourse with rising specialisation, such as ‘tradable emission license’, ‘zero-rating goods’, ‘tax-free child care’, ‘cross-referenced card indexes’, and so on.
Not surprisingly, I also find a modern note of mistrust and resentment against ‘the system’ as some overpowering monolith which is not subject to ‘accountability’ [1] or which one ought to ‘fight’ for ‘change’ against the odds [2].
[1] The result is red tape, unaccountability and constipated government, yet little incentive for anyone to analyse and tackle the problems of the system as a whole, ensuring that accountability in such a system is impossible. (Against a Federal Europe)
[2] It was once suggested to me that rather than remove my children, I should try to fight the system from the inside and endeavour to change the school. (Alton Herald)
In science, however, the picture is consistently brighter: an almost paradoxical generality being assigned via a programmatically specialised meaning, namely in ‘Systems Theory’ (Ashby 1956; von Bertalanffy 1968), viz.:
[3] Systems theory science argues that however complex or diverse the world that we experience, [its] organization can be described by concepts and principles which are independent from the specific domain. [It] focuses on the more complex, adaptive, self-regulating systems. […] Structure and function of a system cannot be understood in separation (Principia Cybernetica)WWW
To judge from the Internet, ‘systems theory’, at 1,090,000 hits, is still very much alive and percolating (see now Laszlo 1996; Weinberg 2001).
But I see little apparent impact on ‘linguistics’, the presumptive ‘modern science of language’. I found that term co-occurring on the Internet with ‘systems theory’ at just 57,000 hits — hardly impressive compared to the 1,200,000 co-occurrences of ‘linguistics’ with ‘logic’. To my mind, this strong preference suggests a view of ‘language’ as an essentially static and isolated system, common in formal logic, rather than the programmatically dynamic and interactive system envisioned in systems theory (cf. Beaugrande 1980).
The static view seems to have dominated what I have been told is called ‘mainstream linguistics’ by means of an arcane dualism. Saussure’s foundational Course in General Linguistics, while conceding that ‘in the lives of individuals and societies, speech is more important than anything else’, proclaimed nonetheless that ‘the true and unique object of linguistics is language studied in and for itself’; ‘language will stand apart from everything else’ ‘as a well-defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts’; by contrast, ‘we cannot put’ ‘speech’ ‘in any category of human facts, for we cannot discover its unity’ (1966 [1916]: 13, 232, 9). Half a century later, Chomsky (1965: 3f, 201) influentially averred that the ‘observed use of language’ ‘surely cannot constitute the subject-matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline’; ‘much of the actual speech observed consists of fragments and deviant expressions of a variety of sorts’. Instead, ‘linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly’ (1965:3).
In terms of systems theory, the implication would be that language, a ‘homogeneous’ system of high order, when put to use in speech, is transformed or decays into a ‘heterogeneous’ non-system of high disorder, which the hearer transforms back again. For models of such an implausible process, we might look to ‘catastrophe theory’, but only on the speaker’s side; we would need some ‘reverse catastrophe’ or ‘eucatastrophe theory’ to model the hearer’s side.
Among the foremost achievements of ‘systemic functional linguistics’ has been to expound an alternative view of the relation between language and language use (e.g. Halliday 1992) — which, since the term ‘speech’ would seem to neglect writing, we can neutrally designate as ‘text’ (see especially Martin 1992); intentionally interrelated texts can be said to constitute a ‘discourse’. In that spirit, I would reason as follows:
Ø Both ‘language’ and ‘text’ are ‘systemic’: not order opposed to disorder but distinct modes of order.
Ø Applied to a language, the term ‘system’ is implicitly an abbreviation for multisystem, i.e., integrating multiple sub-systems through global systemic relations, e.g., relating lexicogrammar to prosody.
Ø A text represents a comparatively small and selective system but is still multisystemic by virtue of local systemic relations.
Ø The language system is more paradigmatic (multiple choices in weakly ordered arrays); the text system is more syntagmatic (individual choices in linear order); but the distinction is far from so absolute as has sometimes been suggested.
Ø The language system thus organises potential choices; the text attests actual choices, though the latter often gain significance through potential choices that were not selected but might have been.
Ø The relations among the actual choices in a text are typically more specific and motivated than among potential choices in the language.
Ø Globally, the relations between language and text are intersystemic in the sense of sharing not just the multiple sub-systems like ‘lexicon’ and ‘grammar’, or better, ‘lexicogrammar’, but also being regulated by systemic processes that support regularities in fluent selection and combination, including the preferential lexical and grammatical choices known as collocations and colligations.
Ø The relations between choices within a single text is intratextual in the stronger sense of being intentionally relevant.
Ø The relations between two or more texts in the same language is intertextual in the weaker sense of all exploiting the systemic regularities of the language.
Ø The relations between two or more texts intended for the same discourse language are intradiscursive.
Ø The relations between two or more texts not intended for the same discourse language are extratextual but interdiscursive.
Ø The set of texts in the same language known to a single competent speaker or writer is a personal intertext which fluctuates among situations and which may well be revised or enlarged by contact with other personal intertexts.
Ø A language is acquired as a child sets up a personal intertext though contact with the personal intertexts of others, especially the caregivers, and gradually organises the intersystemic processing of regularities relating to the language.
Ø A discourse can now be more precisely defined as an interpersonal intertext that organises multiple texts from different participants, mainly in conversation. Its size and variety will in general determine its plausibility for indicating systemic arrays of regularities of the language as a whole.
Ø A very large corpus of authentic discourse, such as the British National Corpus, is primarily an extrapersonal intertext or interdiscourse, and secondarily an interpersonal intertext or interdiscourse in so far as numerous texts or discourses in it are intentionally directed toward others, even if no response is expected or forthcoming, e.g., comments on discourses of prominent and influential people. Again, its size and variety will in general determine its plausibility for indicating systemic regularities of the language as a whole; as the set is enlarged, the actually attested regularities will lend sharper focus to the systemic regularities as reflected or implicated by texts.
This line of reasoning seems to me fairly safe and straightforward, albeit not underwritten by ‘mainstream linguistics’.
To my mind, the perhaps most crucial yet insufficiently explored factor in the reasoning concerns the intersystemic relations between language and text. I shall accordingly postulate a set of process-product relations which might entail some substantial revisions or expansions of our wonted terms and concepts and which can be observed at work in large sets of authentic data.
B. Intersystemic processes between language and discourse
The central notion here is a dialectical view of language not as some ideal static system but as a systemic processing resource expressly designed for the transition to the text-system; conversely, text-systems can modify or expand the language-system, which is most evident during the child’s or learner’s progress during acquisition. The processes are not operations that discourse participants can chose to perform or not; they are deeply and automatically implicated in the transition, although the products must still interface with the personal intertexts of the discourse participants.
Provisionally, then, I shall propose twelve interactive processes as attested by less noticed data where dynamic pressure and evolution seem be active, taken from my own English Prose Corpus (EPC, 100 million words of ‘classic texts), the British National Corpus (BNC, 100 million words of contemporary texts), and the Internet accessed via AltaVista (uncountable words in on-line texts, annotated with WWW).
Actualisation can serve as the overarching term for the array of processes for transforming the potential of language to Actual Text, or vice-versa.
Usually, actualisation is effortless, but not always, viz.:
[4] ‘I imagine’, Alexandra said with difficulty, her swimming eyes still fixed on her plate, ‘that in most households, people of twenty-one are not required to eat food they detest as if they were children.’ (Legacy of Love)
[5] She pushed blindly past Guy, and made a desperate bolt for the door. ‘You two go ahead’, she managed to say chokingly, her throat aching with self-disgust. (Love by Design)
Obviously, actualisation must be a multisystemic complex of interactive processes. By far the most exploratory work, albeit seldom using the term, has been compiled on Grammaticalisation, which engenders the Grammaticality of the text.
The tendency of theoretical linguistics to see ‘grammaticality’ as a factor of the language system is probably due to the quest for formality elsewhere than the text. Besides, ‘grammaticality’ was expected to determine the limits upon the potential of the language for the formation of ‘sentences’, but this expectation has, I believe, been roundly refuted by authentic data. Still, the linguists had already retrenched by setting aside ‘actual speech’ as ‘fragments and deviant expressions’ (Chomsky).
Curiously (or not?), this technical misconception dovetails with popular attitudes about ‘grammar’ being ‘correct’ [6] or ‘bad’ [7].
[6] All writing must have correct grammar if it is to be considered credible and noteworthy (East Tennessee State University)
[7] Bad grammar seriously annoys me, and sends a shiver down my spine. There's one group of people who are mainly to blame... Teachers! All teachers should have some serious improvements with [sic] their English skills. (Final Fantasy)
The readiness of ordinary citizens to pose as experts on ‘grammar’ — competent to pass judgment even on English teachers — for the edification of neighbours, children, immigrants, and so on, masks their general ignorance about how Grammaticalisation functions as an integral operation in the production and comprehension of any text at all.
Far less exploratory work has been compiled on Lexicalisation which engenders the Lexicality of the text-system; in fact, the latter term is rather a rarity.
No doubt the “lexical” construction of a language like English, which has assiduously raided other languages for centuries, is hard to view as a ‘well-defined object” (Saussure). It necessarily appears “heterogeneous” because of the immense variety of discursive work it must accommodate. But I hold that we can ‘discover its unity’ if we attain sufficiently large corpora and concordance software for systematic searches.
Popular attitudes follow a different trajectory here. The supposed distinction between ‘correct’ versus ‘bad grammar’ is essentially a technical linguistic issue of conforming to various ‘rules’, many of them peremptory, arcane, and in any case unworkable. But the distinction between the ‘right words’ versus and the ‘wrong words’ is more overtly situational and social [8-9]. Moreover, some existentialist doubts persist about the power of ‘words’ to express the ‘real stuff’ in principle [10].
[8] I want to tell my husband I want a divorce and I am having a hard time coming up with the right words to say it. (Divorce Support)WWW
[9] What America needed that day was the gentle words of a seasoned pastor. But Falwell chose the wrong words at the wrong time. (Choosing Right Words)WWW
[10] Somehow it is the stuff beyond words, or behind the words, or under the words that is the real stuff. And we know that, but we easily get distracted by mountains of words. (Ming the Mechanic)WWW
From a systemic functional standpoint, ‘lexicon’ and ‘grammar’ are both sets of constraints upon selection and combination, the lexicon being more ‘delicate’, i.e., more specific and detailed about its requirements. We might accordingly integrate the two systemic processes as Lexicogrammaticalisation that engenders the Lexicogrammaticality of the text-system. Probably, such ponderous terms would meet with resistance even if we concede that they better describe the process packages that actually set to work. Certainly, the constraints of ‘lexicon’ and ‘grammar’ cannot be applied independently; ‘grammar’ cannot be actualised at all except via ‘lexical’ resources. Both participate jointly in agnate processes of ‘metaphoring’ (cf. Halliday 1984: 53f), viz.:
[11] Lawmaker backs train through Iowa (Des Moines Register)
[12] Genetic Engineering Splits Scientists (Washington Post)
[13] Jury is still out on composting toilets (Salem Statesman-Journal)
[14] Crater may be smoking gun in dinosaurs’ end (Flint Journal)
The relation between Grammaticality and Lexicality is effectively regulated by parameter of Delicacy: relative degrees of specification and detail among relevant constraints. In general, the more lexical choices are more delicate, and the more grammatical ones less so. For example, the English Verb ‘bereave’ occurs in the BNC at high Delicacy: almost exclusively in the Past Participle, before the Noun, and in the meaning of ‘having suffered the death of someone close’, e.g. [15]; and collocating with a delicate range of Nouns (almost all Humans), the most frequent being ‘people, person, family’, again as in [15]. The form ‘bereft’, though technically an alternate Past Participle of the same Verb and defined by some dictionaries in the same meaning, is rarely used this way, but comes after the Noun (Human or Thing), colligates with ‘of’ to mean ‘lacking’, and collocates with a range of needed but missing items rather than deceased people, as in [16-17], also including, in BNC data, ‘speech, fun, ideas, talent, hope, decency, trees, roofs, lambs, servants, carpets’. Whereas ‘bereaved’ implies sombre commiseration, ‘bereft’ often implies indignation.
[15] A mother who lost her twin daughters has set up a counselling agency to help bereaved families. (Northern Echo)
[16] The official North Korean state news agency described [South Korean President] Roh […] as an ‘imperialist colonial stooge bereft of any independence’. (Independent)
[17] Ask the person from whom you are buying your new house to list the smaller fixtures and fittings that are to be left; […] people often find their homes bereft of hooks, light bulbs, and toilet rolls. (Belfast Telegraph)
In the BNC, I find just two rather insubstantial uses of ‘bereave/bereaves’ in the Simple Present, and none at all of the Present Participle ‘bereaving’.
At low delicacy, I find the Passive colligation of Pronoun + be + ‘to be’ + Past Participle, associated uniformly with Pejorative Attitude. In BNC data, the sinister inconveniences to which ‘I am’ (or ‘you are’, ‘he/she is’ etc.) ‘to be’ subjected include ‘hounded, demoted, despised, cut out, punished unfairly, investigated, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, incarcerated, imprisoned for life, chained hand and foot, hanged’. In EPC data, I am to be ‘abandoned, humbled, persecuted, trampled upon, devoured, condemned’, and ‘hanged’ all over again — and, for bad measure, ‘boiled alive’, ‘burned at the stake’, and ‘buried at sea’. Ouch.
Where Grammaticality and Lexicality seem less integrated is in the discourse of learners of English as a foreign language. I obtained data from students at the United Arab Emirates University which seemed grammatically regular but lexically bizarre not to say astounding, as when I was attempting to convey the Medial Transitivity in English whilst they struggled to model it on the Passive as the familiar alternative to the Active:
[18] sample text: Mrs Bennet fidgeted about in her chair, got up, and sat down again. (Pride and Prejudice)
student responses:
The chair was fidgeted up and down by Mrs Bennet.
Getting up and sitting down got fidgeted in her chair.
Mrs Bennet's chair was fidgeted about, was got up, and was sat down again.
By contrast, other Arab student data was plainly both grammatically and lexically deviant:
[19] When the British colony found in Jamaica a new of the English language began. The people there use a Pidgin in a bar named Bar Bados. Those Jamaican people for strength English when they speaker their language.
[20] Miss Raymond looks smelly [= smiley] face but speaks in pride ways. She collects her hair in the back. Her teeth look when she talks, and she owns angry tone. She is a liar person who lied to disappear her ignorant.
[21] If anyone dressed by the name footman he will be shame that they don’t even want to wear their clothes. In the US was not respect and tricker man and swindle person.
No doubt the heavier emphasis upon ‘grammar’ or ‘lexicon’ in many EFL programmes can contribute to this imbalance.
Again less studied and taught than Lexicality is the process of Prosodification that engenders the Prosody of the Text-System.
Its neglect is plausibly to its richness exceeding all bounds of ‘correctness’ or ‘rightness’ by allowing for many nuances of personal interpretation, as shown by [22-22a] and [23-23a]. (Hollow arrows show pitch contour; thick filled arrows show strong stress; thin filled arrows show weak stress; upright bars indicate a pause.)
Sequences which are allowed by the lexicogrammar may be prosodically unappealing [24-25] (Slovene student data).
[24] The sea floor is in closer to the shore solid.
[more fluent: In closer to the shore, the sea floor is solid.]
[25] On the slope of Cape Roenk, typical sub-Mediterranean species, despite the fact that it has northern position and
that the substratum is less flyshy, live.
[more fluent: On the slope of Cape Roenk live typical sub-Mediterranean species]
‘Flysh’ or ‘flysch’ was a new lexical item for me: ‘a sequence of shales rhythmically interbedded with thin, hard sandstones’ (Britannica).
The least studied and taught is the process of Visualisation that engenders the Visuality of the Text-System.
Written language is after all designed to be looked at, from the ornate parchments of the high middle ages and the renaissance to the flashy websites of today. Internet browsers also allow for the easy transmission of photographs that complement and expand the significance of the written text, as in this report from Der Spiegel (English edition, June 2006) on the ‘gigantic orb’ set up slap in front of the famous Brandenburg Gate to commemorate the World Football Cup hosted by Germany:
[26] The massive sphere glows an eerie blue at night and its gaping maw seems to swallow up people as they march inside. But what looks like a scene from a cheep sci-fi flick is something more nefarious than aliens enslaving mankind.
Unfortunately, the organisers overdid it a bit by launching a barrage of fireworks squeezed in between the Brandenburg Gate and the globe. The resulting smoke enveloped the square within seconds and visibility dropped to nothing, offering a test of what Berlin was probably like when the Red Army came for a visit in 1945.
The very symbols of modernity and unity are discursively metamorphised by this Visuality into an atavistic and sinister ambience with historical overtones.
Returning to the top levels of abstraction, the process of Generalising engenders the Generality in or among Text-Systems, that is, the extent or reach of regularities.
On the whole, this process is more efficient in grammaticalising than in lexicalising. For example, through historically somewhat recent, the formation of English Plural with ‘‑(e)s’ is far more general than the older with ‘‑(e)n’. Indeed, this formation is spontaneously generalised to alternative Plurals, sometimes to more than one, viz.:
[27] ‘Twins didn't eat one crumb’, Susannah assured her. ‘ Mouses did’. (Children of Dynmouth)
[28] use the criterions of deployment or a readiness exercise […] and sustainment based on functional inspection criterions (Air Force)WWW
[29] Student was weak in two criterias of the exemplary performance for this objective. (Baylor University)WWW
[30] Use of datums in product definition is required in order to specify part features that are used as a basis for functional relationship with other features. (Candoris)WWW
[31] I am having a problem to get all datas into one table. I must get datas from 2 other tables. (databasejournal)WWW
On the lexical side, such a process of Generality may be largely indifferent to degrees of specificity of choices, e.g. ‘ants’ (meaning ants) versus ‘anfractuosities’ (meaning windings or turnings in a channel or passage).
The closely allied parameter of Consistentising — a justified neologism to remind us of the dynamic processes — engenders the Consistency in or among Text-Systems and concerns the imposition and maintenance of degrees of similarity or uniformity among the repertory of choices.
Here too, grammaticalising tends to be more efficient than lexicalising. For example, the formation of the Past Tense of Verbs with the Ending ‘‑d’ or ‘‑ed’ or ‘‑t’ began as an obscure but efficient historical innovation. Though the older Past Tense of Verbs alternating their stem-vowels has survived as pockets of inconsistency, some regional Englishes have retained more than has ‘Standard English’ [32-33], whilst some respond to the pressure for consistency by merging the two options [34-35].
[32] Mostly, we jes clumb up on the shed top, inna shade of a tree, and passed the time (Zeke & the Hoss-Puppy)WWW
[33] That iijit [idiot] Frenchman got tite [drunk] and got tryin some fool trick or other walking a timber stick and got upsot into the wet. (Man from Glengarry)WWW
[34] all of us ‘fans’ ranned outside and we saw him running to the bathroom! (Xanga)WWW
[35] He was teaching his boy Melvin how to play some baseball so he stolt this baseball bat off the churchhouse softball team. (Digging Postholes)WWW
Much of ‘language teaching’ is devoted to heightening the consistency of ‘grammar’, even among native speakers; success is limited where the alternative forms are consistent with the system of a regional English. Such holds especially for the universal Negative ‘ain’t’, e.g., for ‘isn’t’, ‘haven’t’, and ‘didn’t’ [36-37].
[36] She ain't exactly my girlfriend, but we spend loads of time together. I ain't asked her if she's my girlfriend (Billy Bayswater)
[37] The police shoot them three fellas, but they ain't get Alfred. (Seeing in the Dark)
Attempting to displace the single form with the full repertory of Standard English would disrupt the consistency within the subs-system of Verbs in those varieties of English, and so is naturally resisted.
One product of consistency I have uncovered is not even fully recognised by the voluminous and authoritative Comprehensive Grammar (Quirk et al. 1985) nor the Longman Grammar (Biber et al. 1999), both based on authentic data, and will be finally expounded in my own Friendly Grammar of English (Beaugrande forthcoming). My initial hypothesis was that the four famous Clause Types of Statement, Question, Command, and Exclamation — routinely mislabelled as ‘sentence types’ — ought to be more expansively consistent than has been described in order to fully sustain their respective functions. I am arguing, somewhat heretically, that they are distinguished primarily by their prosody and only secondarily by their grammatical form as Declarative, Interrogative, Exclamatory, and Imperative.
Here, I shall present just one element I explored while testing this hypothesis, namely the Tag, a maximally short and simple Tone Group whose function accommodates and assists the Clause Type being ‘tagged’. I shall summarise selected findings, using marks to distinguish the three degrees of Stress in English. Strong Stress, shown here with a raised Mark !, is articulated with the most force; Weak Stress, shown with a lowered and inverted mark ¡, is articulated with less force; and Unstressed, shown with no mark, is articulated with the least force.
The common Look-Back Tag comes just after the end of the Clause to reaffirm or modify the function, whereas the uncommon Look-Ahead Tag comes before to anticipate. Most Tags are Colligations of a Pronoun Subject with a Pro-Verb like ‘be’ or ‘do’, one of the two items taking Weak Stress.
The only Tag regularly described in ‘grammar-books’ for English is Tag Questions. The common Look-Back Tag Question has the form of an Interrogative Yes-or-No Question following a Statement in Declarative form. This Tag is a minimal Clause with just the Predicate as Pro-Verb with a Weak Stress, and the Unstressed Subject as Pro-Noun.
The Tag Question is a frequent Pattern for mildly encouraging confirmation from the audience about what should be Certain or Uncertain, and operates with contrary Polarities. A Negative Tag after an Affirmative Statement encourages a ‘yes’ Answer [38-39], whereas an Affirmative Tag after a Negative Statement encourages a ‘no’ Answer [40-41]. Two Affirmatives, however, suggest a more pointed or urgent Uncertainty requiring an Answer [42-43]; and suitably emphatic Prosody can even suggest scepticism or challenge, while the Pronoun gains Weak Stress too [44-45].
[38] ‘I’m a sod, ¡aren’t I?’ he said flatly. ‘Yes’. (Strawberries and Wine)
[39] ‘This uncertainty is hard on the nerves, ¡isn’t it?’ ‘Yes. It is.’ (Hand in Glove)
[40] ‘I’m not exactly a gibbering wreck, ¡am I?’ ‘No’ (Love by Design)
[41] ‘It’s not really the height of the concert season, ¡is it?’ ‘No’ (committee meeting)BNC
[42] ‘This is the room, ¡is it?’ said the gentleman. (Pickwick)
[43] ‘It’s all right, then, ¡is it?’ asked Marie anxiously. ‘Coming round to your house like this?’ (Lock)
[44] How dare you! So I’m an object of pity, ¡am ¡I? (Killing Frost)
[45] That’s your errand, ¡is ¡it? What! he condoles with me, ¡does ¡he? (Vanity Fair)
An infrequent type of Look-Back Tag Question occupies a separate Utterance coming after a Question Clause and reaffirming the Questioning. When the Uncertainty is intense, the Auxiliary merits Strong Stress [46-47].
[46] Are you just kidding me on? !Are you? (medical consultation)BNC
[47] And is he Liverpool? !Is he? (conversation)BNC
Or, a Look-Back Tag Question in another Conversational Turn takes the Pattern of a Pro-Verb Auxiliary bearing Strong Stress plus a Pro-Noun. Both Affirmative and Negative can signal some interest, curiosity, or scepticism [48-51], whose force increases when Strong Stress rises in emphasis [50-51]. The Pronoun in the Tag can either fall down to low Pitch to indicate your interest in what was said [48]; or take on rising Pitch to indicate you feel doubtful [50].
[48] ‘Mr Pickwick, sir, I have sent up my card.’ ‘!Have you?’ (Pickwick)
[49] ‘I don’t believe I know your name!’ ‘!Don’t you? My, that’s funny!’ (Babbit)
[50] ‘Captain Cuttle’s at home, I know,’ said Walter. ‘!Is he?’ replied the widow lady. ‘Indeed!’ ‘He has just been speaking to me’, said Walter. ‘!Has he?’ (Dombey)
[51] ‘They don’t want him to go.’ ‘!Don’t they?’ I said, curiously. (Heart of Darkness)
The Double Look-Back Tag is realised by a left-right mirror-image Pattern. First comes a Statement Tag with unstressed Pronoun, and Statement Auxiliary at Strong Stress; then comes a Question Tag with Question Auxiliary at Weak Stress, and the same unstressed Pronoun. In my data, the Tags are either both Affirmative [52-53] or else both Negative [54-55].
[52] ‘I detest your three chairs and a bolster.’ ‘You !do, ¡do you?’ (Stoops to Conquer)
[53] ‘He’s shocked at the way your father goes on in’. ‘Oh, he !is, ¡is he?’ (Pickwick)
[54] ‘My name isn’t Betsy, ma’am.’ ‘It !isn’t, ¡isn’t it?’ ‘No; it is Grace.’ (Cash Boy)
[55] ‘I wouldn’t give a dern for spunk-water.’ ‘You !would·n’t, ¡would·n’t you?’ (Tom Sawyer)
The double Tag can signal a more disquieting Uncertainty than the single Tag about the Statement in the previous Turn.
The Look-Back Tag Statement reaffirms with a Pro-Noun looking back to Subject and a Pro-Verb looking back to the Verb Phrase of the Clause Core; the Pronoun gets Weak Stress (or Strong Stress for more emphasis), and the Pro-Verb ‘be’ or ‘do’ is Unstressed.
[56] I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, ¡he was. (Alice)
[57] You’re really morbid, ¡you are. (Jubilee Wood)
[58] They liked a bit o’ fun, ¡they did. (Treasure Island)
[59] You admired him from your heart only this morning, ¡you did. (Madding Crowd)
A short version in casual or regional spoken English has just a Look-Back Pro-Noun Tag, again occupying its own Tone Group and taking Weak Stress; this looks back to the Subject, which can be highlighted as the Agent or Medium [60-63].
[60] I’m not one for computers, ¡me. Me eldest’s got one but I never could get used to it. (prose)BNC
[61] You couldn’t beat a fucking carpet, ¡you. (Payback)
[62] it’s a wonder he ain’t fat as a pig, ¡him. He never stops (conversation)BNC
[63] Oh my God! this’ll mean trouble. They’re a rough lot, ¡them. (Wingless Bird)
As a converse option, the Look-Ahead Pronoun Tag functions to announce some Topic and to look ahead to the Pronoun Subject inside the Clause. This Tag is likely to merit Strong Stress in its own Tone Group, whilst the following Pronoun Subject takes Weak Stress; and a Pause separates the two Pronouns.
[64] These people can take many blows, but !I, ¡I am fragile as a butterfly. (Harpers)
[65] my neighbours are barbarians, and !you, ¡you are a thousand miles away (Magus)
[66] However conspicuous the outward achievement, !he, ¡he himself, Magnus Derrick, had failed (Octopus)
[67] Jay was blessed with that summer and the sunshine of Astrid’s love. But !she, ¡she shed her loves in autumn like the trees. (Jay Loves Lucy)
The Look-Back Noun Tag places a Pronoun in the Subject of the Clause and looks back to it in the Tag with a Noun or Noun Phrase as the Subject of the Pro-Verb. Since Identity is already anticipated, the Noun deserves Weak Stress.
[68] He changed his name by deed poll, the ¡father did. (Ulysses)
[69] Yes, she looked very nice, Jo¡anna did. (Pointed Firs)
[70] He had a large circle of relations, ¡that ¡man had. (House of Dreams)
[71] She’s pretty patient, Ma¡rie is. (Billy Bayswater)
A regional variation places the Pro-Verb of the Tag ahead of its Subject:
[72] He’s as strong as a moor pony, is ¡Dickon. (Secret Garden)
[73] He was perfectly sober, was the ¡Admiral. (Jungle)
[74] Mind, he was rather a wild card, was ¡Granda, rather too fond of strong drink. (Seasons of My Life)
[75] He hates cold kipper, does ¡Bidwell. (Expert Witness)
The Tag Command is none too frequent and I haven’t found it in any ‘grammar-books’. Since no Subject is required, the basic options are simply the Pro-Verb forms ‘do’ [76-77] in the Affirmative, and ‘don’t’ [78-79] in the Negative, both in a separate Tone Group following the Command Clause and taking Certain Strong Stress.
[76] Relax, Charles dear soul, and stop wilting, !do. (Phoney War)
[77] Put me down as a nutter, !do. (Lee’s Ghost)
[78] ‘Don’t talk to me, you aggravating thing, !don’t!’ (Pickwick)
[79] ‘They are so beautiful!’ said Mrs Kenwigs, sobbing. ‘Oh, dear’, said all the ladies, ‘don’t give way, !don’t.’ (Nickleby)
The ‘do’ in a separate Tag can add the Pro-Noun ‘it’ as a Direct Object for Affirmative [81] or Negative [80]; Strong Stress probably occurs on ‘do’ or ‘don’t do’.
[80] Save him, save him! […] !Do it, Heyling, !do it (Pickwick)
[81] ‘Oh, Tom, don’t lie — !don’t do it.’ (Sawyer)
A Tag Command in a later Turn by another speaker can encourage or discourage obedience [82-83], though I find very few instances.
[82] ‘Do sit down, Hilda,’ said Connie. ‘!Do!’ the man said. (Chatterly)
[83] ‘O Priam, yield not to him!’ ‘Do !not, dear father.’ (Troilus)
The Look-Ahead Tag Command placed in front to anticipate a Command may encourage or discourage in advance [84-85], though again I found few instances. Sample [86] is a rare co-occurrence of both Look-Ahead and Look-Back Tags.
[84] !Do! Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow upon the foul disease. (Lear)
[85] !Don’t, Maggie, my dear — don’t look so ugly! (Floss)
[86] Do stop your dogs digging there! […] Oh, call them off! !Do! !do! — Oh, !don’t, !don’t! Don’t let them dig! (WouldBeGoods)
The Tag Exclamation after Exclamations like [87], with Strong Stress on the Pro-Verb, is the most infrequent, probably because no further emphasis is usually felt to be called for. The preferred option for Exclamatory form is a Tag Question [88-89], which requires no confirmation (though it would be welcome) but asserts firm conviction.
[87] What a start it is, !isn’t it! (Pickwick)
[88] What a gentleman he is, !isn’t he? (Mayor)
[89] How well she looks, !doesn’t she? (Pickwick)
I find Exclamations in the form like the Declarative being followed by Negative Tags in a form like Interrogative: either in the same Conversational Turn seeking confirmation [90-91], or in a later Turn giving confirmation [92-93]; and both Tags can put Strong Stress on the Verb or Auxiliary and Weak Stress on the Pro-Verb. Affirmative versions are less frequent and point away from confirmation toward scepticism [94] or uneasiness [95].
[90] I am awful, ¡aren’t I! (Jane’s Journey)
[91] But it is ironical, ¡isn’t it! (Damsel in Distress)
[92] ‘Now you can see the castle.’ ‘It’s wonderful!’ ‘!Isn’t it!’ (Jimmy)
[93] ‘Your horse is a fine fellow!’ said Clara. ‘!Isn’t he!’ (Sons and Lovers)
[94] ‘He was Minister for Education in the late Government’. ‘Oh, !was he!’ they say, and dismiss Mr Wood as a nonentity and me as a pedant. (English Character)
[95] ‘I’ve been to the lawyer about my divorce’. She gave a shudder. ‘!Have you!’ (Chatterley)
Or, a warmly confirming Tag in a later Turn can have a Declarative form with Pronoun before Pro-Verb:
[96] ‘They are both in a very melancholy position, and that’s true!’ ‘¡They !are!’ (Mayor of Casterbridge)
[97] ‘Mr Raymond Merrivale. I don't mind saying I think he's a lovely gentleman!’ ‘Oh he is!’ (Classic English Crime)
I found just a few Affirmative Tag Exclamations as separate Utterances in the same Turn after an expressly marked Affirmative Exclamation, with Strong Stress going on the Pro-Verb [98-99], as if to say ‘don’t deny it!’ I found more Tags included within the same Utterance, where Weak Stress goes on the Pronoun [100-101].
[98] You’re a pure boy! You !are! (They Came from SW19)
[99] I know you cared! You !did! I saw your expression. (Hermetech)
[100] We tried it once and we got the wrong ruddy film, ¡we did! (conversation)BNC
[101] You look as if you’ve been in a concentration camp, ¡you do! (Her Living Image)
My conclusion from these attestations would be that my hypothesis of systemic consistency led me to search and discover corpus data confirming categories virtually unrecognised during centuries of English ‘grammar study’.
A converse systemic process is Variation, which engenders the Variety in or among Text-Systems.
In the long range, the instances of lexical variation are far more numerous because their impact upon the system is far more local than grammatical variations; however the latter do appear, usually with some constraints from motivation or attitude.
These constraints may escape notice of non-systemic grammars that suggest free variations. Such is true of the variation between the colligations of Possessive Pro-Noun + Noun versus Noun + ‘of’ + Possessive Pro-Noun. But corpus data showed the latter to be demonstrably more suggestive of Attitudes. Usages preceded by a Demonstrative were consistently Pejorative [102-103], often intensified by a modifier [104-105]. But usages preceded by an indefinite article were consistently Ameliorative [106-107].
[102] That brother of mine’, she said, ‘is an asshole. If he was anyone else's kid, he'd be in jail.’ (The Edge)
[103] Those visitors of hers always make such a lot of noise! (Taking Good Care)
[104] Forgive my not rising, but I dare not move out of this chair until this wretched hair of mine is dry. (Hidden Flame)
[105] ‘Where did you go?’ ‘To that vile city of yours! Absolutely filthy!’ (Part of the Furniture)
[106] The housekeeper was thrilled to meet a cousin of hers in uniform. (Policeman Smiled)
[107] After all, did not a distinguished predecessor of mine write an important book in the 1950s? (I Believe)
More noticeable variation pervades the subsystem of English Pro-Nouns. Though presumably stable in itself, it is unstable in being inconsistent with the rest of the system, since nowhere else are formal distinctions in ‘Case’ and ‘Gender’ sustained. The flock of variations I encountered suggests an awareness of differing forms but also a tendency to improvise. For example, I found Possessive Pro-Nouns occurring in the Subject or Object Forms, e.g.:
[108] Me mum and me dad are separated, like, and me dad reads The Sun. (NME)
[109] I remember this song ‘Shaddup You Face’ [by Joe Dolce], spawning the annoying catch-phase as a response to almost anything. (Fast-Rewind)WWW
[110] Dude, he face is alright, if you just glance at him you can tell right away it’s Sheva [soccer star Andriy Shevchenko]. (Soccer Gaming Forums)WWW
[111] In the illustration she hair looks dark. I think they did a perfect job (mugglenet)WWW
[112] When the CSME [Caribbean Single Market and Economy ] come in lots of the banks gine survive (tek back we houses ) (JustBajan)WWW
[113] I’m not fond of Carlisle. We took us caravan up that way a few years ago (conversation)BNC
[114] And we wont stop till we have ‘em puttin’ they feet in they mouths (Rapsearch)WWW
Reflexives, which are doubly coded for number, turned up a veritable zoo of variations, e.g.:
[115] I like to think of myselves as a catalyst for innovation (Ecademy)WWW
[116] new members introduce yourselfs here with a bit of info on yourselfs (invisionfree)WWW
[117] Stewart found hisself with his back to goal, layed it neatly back to Edwards who absolutely smashed it into the far top corner of the net (Birmingham City)WWW
[118] I just took a shorte breake at work t’ take some snapshottes o’ several members of that cutthroat crew o’ mine, includin’ the humble ole Captn hisselves. ()WWW
[119] she was also surprised to hear it; she had never thought of herselves as strong (The Valkyrie)WWW
[120] As the security forces transform and rid itsselves of the baggages of the apartheid past, they will be ab