Assessing the potential of using large language models for pragmatic annotation of historical texts

Abstract This study investigates the viability of using large language models ( llm s) to conduct pragmatic annotations of historical texts. The investigation employs a small corpus of witness depositions and compares Claude 3.5 Sonnet — an llm that excels in reasoning over text — with two human annotators over their performance in the pragmatic annotation of Early Modern English ( em od e ) texts. The study also compares the model’s annotations on modernised and original versions of the corpus