A corpus-based network analysis of onomastic references in 16th- and 17th century British grammar writing

The present study investigates who was considered authoritative in matters of language in the 16th and 17th centuries as well as how grammar authors position themselves with respect to these authorities. It evaluates whether a shift in referencing norms may already be observed from the 16th to the 17th century in these regards. As it is claimed that in England the 16th century marks the beginning of English grammar writing ( McCarthy 2020 : 19–20) and the 17th century saw a shift in favour of English being recognized as a separate academic discipline ( Beal 2004 : 102), one can ask if and how onomastic — that is, name-based — references, appear in those grammars and how they can be categorized. One of the findings of this study is that the onomastic references found in the 16th- and 17th-century grammars can be categorized along the six semantic categories suggested in previous work for 19th-century grammars ( Busse et al. 2020 : 11–12). These include, for example, quotations, opinions, or mere mentions. To account for a possible shift in reference strategies over time, these semantic categories were reevaluated by means of inter-rater reliability (IRR) in the 16th- and 17th-century context. Our main findings show that while some 16th-century authors put emphasis on Latinate authors, others embrace moving away from the Latinate approach by not referring to the established Latinate authorities at all or only rarely. A significant shift in onomastic referencing can be observed from the 16th to the 17th century, however the Latinate authorities still held significant ground in the 18th century grammar texts.