Punctuation . , : ; ? ! " " - ( ) Where do these signs come from? When were they first used in texts, and for what purposes? Has the function of these signs always been the same?
Some of this is useful. For example... The symbol itself, "?", is thought to be derived from the first and last letters of "quaestio". ... or ... The symbol itself, "!", is thought to come from the first and last letters of the Latin word for "joy" ("io") in the same manner as the question mark "?" was formed. Also, this site realtes a bit of interesting information on punctuation's history. This is probably the best of them, though.
Rosa, I'm surprised you don't know this already. Isn't punctuation a part of linguistics? Does linguistics concentrate more on the now than the etymology of the words?
But they aren't words. They are symbols. And punctuation is merely an invention of writing so that ya can make sense of a string of words. Yer probably thinking of grammar being part of linguistics. Then again, I dunno if grammar is part of it either.
I'd think punctuation would be integral to linguistics. Part of morphology. We'll have to wait for Rosa to come back and answer us though. She's our resident linguist. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
No, but you do write with them. I believe that linguistics also covers the written word. I might be wrong. We'll have to wait for the good Rosa to come back and enlighten us. At the least a linguist in training. She knows her stuff though, don't doubt that.
Written language is language, just as much as spoken language. Linguistics studies both. Many punctuation marks represent non-verbal sounds that nonetheless convey meaning: pauses, changes of inflection, etc. A complete linguistic study must include all of that. To the extent that written and spoken languages have diverged, some punctuation marks exist to parse constructions that could not be conveyed orally. Parentheses and quotation marks, for instance. It's pretty difficult to read aloud a passage full of those punctuation marks without the listener losing track of the nesting. And the reverse is obviously just as true. It's very difficult to express sarcasm, petulance, or whining in writing if in the oral version it's carried completely in the tone of voice. So sometimes the study of the written form of a language takes a few turns that wouldn't be made in the study of the spoken form. If you're looking for an extreme case of that, look no further than China. ^_^ Still, it's all linguistics.
I thank you for your answers. Yes, it is all linguistics. There are some intriguing issues in punctuation rules if we compare languages. For example, German and Slovene have commas between clauses where they are unimaginable in English, like: a friend who would do anything for her ein Freund, der alles für sie tun würde he who speaks der, der spricht Tell me what you want. Sag mir, was du willst. I am wondering how it could come to this -- why some language use commas to separate clauses, while some others don't. I sometimes still have troubles reading English, the commas that separate clauses make reading and understanding much easier. (This is what English would look like with commas set by German/Slovene rules: The woman, that is sitting there, has a nice dress. She is holding a small dog, that has curly fur and eyes, that look inquisitively. I have asked the woman, what the dog's name was, and she answered, that his name is Binky. I wanted to know, where she got the dog. ...)
Your transcription of English with the extra commas is understandable and considering today's level of education many people wouldn't even notice that it's unconventional. (Notice that I wrote that entire last sentence correctly with no commas.) As long as you make sure to use them in pairs, you won't violate any important laws. ^_^ I have enough of a working knowledge of German to attempt to answer your question. The commas in written German really do represent slight pauses in speech. Those nested "Schachtelsätzen" ("box clauses") put the words in a different sequence than we put them in English, and the logic does not flow naturally. The pauses tell the listener where to pick up the second half of the higher-level nested Schachtelsatz. When I say something like, "Ich habe einen Freund, wessen Name, ich, vor den Frühstuck, nicht erinerrn kann, gestern in der Straße gesehen," I need the pauses for myself, so I don't get lost in the sentence. The listener, who isn't privy to what is going on in my head, certainly needs them. (Forgive me if I got my German genders wrong. ^_^ ) In English we reorder it: "In the street yesterday I saw a friend whose name I can't remember before breakfast." We don't need the pauses in speech and we don't need the commas in writing. I'm not familiar with Slovene but I've studied Russian and Czech and to an English speaker both languages put their sentences into utterly illogical order. I just saw a photo of Russians carrying picket signs protesting the slaughter in Ossetia. The phrase was translated into English as "Only cowards fight children." But the original Russian (I'm not going to try to reproduce it in this font) was "Children fight only cowards." That is completely backwards! In the Slavic languages you have the accusative and other cases to make the meaning decipherable, but it still doesn't make it clear. I still believe my original assertion: that commas represent pauses in speech.
It IS clear, but in a synthetic manner -- as opposed to analytic. In Slovene, the sentence in question could be thus: 1. Otroke tepejo le strahopetneži. 2. Le strahopetneži tepejo otroke. It means almost the same; the emphasis and the new information is added in the rhema of the sentence -- and this is the last word/phrase. Sentence 2 is neutral, and with a typical analytical word order: subject - verb - object. The structure of sentence 1 allows to reorganize the matter in a manner that the emphasis -- yes, the cowards! -- is put on the end, as the thema-rhema structure demands (thema-rhema is a matter of meaning, and as such not language specific -- you say the new info at the end). Note that because we have cases, we can afford all sorts of things with how we make emphasizes! Here is the noun "otrok" 'child' in plural: 1. otroci 2. otrok 3. otrokom 4. otroke 5. otrocih 6. otroki There is not one single thing to mistake here. But if your native language is English, you'll have troubles understanding how profound cases are. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! For our terms, the word order in English is extremely stiff and rigid. -- This is how English compensated for not having cases. I'll give some examples for cases: 1. Otroci sedijo pri mizi. 'Children are sitting at the table.' Pri mizi sedijo otroci. 'At the table, children are sitting.' 2. Hiša bi bila prazna brez otrok. 'The house would be empty without children.' Brez otrok bi bila hiša prazna. 'Without children, the house would be empty.' 3. a) Mati je otrokom prinesla jabolka. 'The mother brought the children apples.' b) Otrokom je mati prinesla jabolka. c) Jabolka je mati prinesla otrokom. Example a is neutral, in that the order is subj - obj1 - verb - obj2. Example b emphasises on the children; putting the obj 1 in the front emphasises it (against usual thema-rhema rules); similar with example c. 4. a) Mati ima rada svoje otroke. 'The mother loves her children.' b) Svoje otroke ima mati rada. In b, the emphasis is on "ima rada", a verbal phrase which can take over, against usual thema-rhema rules. 5. V otrocih je veliko veselja. 'There is a lot of joy in children.' 6. Z otroki so pogosto težave. 'There are often troubles with children.' The reason why we can shift around words is connected with how clauses make complex sentences: Mati je otrokom prinesla jabolka, ne breskev. 'The mother brought the children apples, not peaches. Otrokom je prinesla jabolka mati, ne teta. 'The mother brought the children apples, it wasn't the aunt who brought the children apples.' Jabolka je mati prinesla otrokom, ne svojemu možu. 'The mother brought the apples to her children, not to her husband.' We simply change some word order -- and the emphasis changes. In English, you have to add new words, or rephrase the whole thing, even using passive (which we don't really have). Anyway, the Slavic languages are hard to learn, I am told. (Slovene being one of the worst.) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Hehe Tell me about it, Danish has some of the same problems, maybe not so much as Slovenian, i dont know. But it's easly see when a certian someone forget or just dont feel like correcting his posts in the Village. Anyhow this topic is way above my head, i usual just talk, then add random and dots as commas as i go Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Mine too. But quite interesting. Your random dots and commas brings to mind the chapter of Flowers for Algernon where Charlie learns punctuation. I! learned, how. to! use, punctuation' today? Punctuation! is? fun. (Not as good as the original. I just moved and my copy of the book is buried away somewhere or I'd have quoted the book.)
Hey, My use of punctuation, Is not, that bad? ok!, maybe, it is. All this punctuatin it is intresting but sometime it feels cumbersome, I feel it's much easier to just set comma's where I feel a pause would be nice, sometimes i even set a correct one... it think Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I'm sure that growing up with one type of language or the other ensures that you develop synapses that function efficiently in that type. People who grow up not only bilingually but with two languages that are extremely different, such as the Hong Kong residents who learn both English and Chinese almost from birth, have a tremendous advantage. Their brains are more powerful. Yes, that is more difficult to do in English. In speech we can emphasize a word with tone, but in writing, we have to use punctuation to accomplish that. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Chinese is especially challenging because the tones have already been co-opted as phonemes. You can't raise or lower your tone to express emotion because you'll be saying a different word. About all you can do is make a word louder or softer. Of course Chinese more than compensates by having a much larger vocabulary, so you can express shades of meaning by your choice of words. You can also combine words to form new ones in almost any way you want, limited only by whether people can understand you. Oh yes, I have memorized tables of noun declensions and it does indeed give me a headache. It's bad enough in German, where there are only four cases. Fortunately the case endings have deteriorated in the nouns themselves, so grammar requires you to use the definite article (or a substitute like the indefinite article or a possessive pronoun) to ensure that the case is expressed, so you only have to know how to decline the articles correctly. Many nouns only have two endings to learn in their entire paradigm. In Latin, with no articles and five cases, it's much more difficult. In the Slavic languages with no articles and six cases, it's impossible. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I love Chinese. There are no endings at all. No case, no tense, no number. Wo chi yu. I eat fish. If it's important to the subject matter to make it clear that the action took place yesterday, you just say Zuotian wo chi yu. Yesterday I eat fish. If it's important to make it clear that you did not eat just one fish, you just say Zuotian wo chi liangge yu. Yesterday I eat two fish. Or Zuotian wo chi henduo yu. Yesterday I eat many fish. Then you wouldn't like Chinese. The word order is even more strict. You have virtually no latitude at all in changing word order. In English we can say After breakfast I went to school on the bus. I went to school on the bus after breakfast. After breakfast I took the bus to school. In Chinese you have to say Wo chi zaofan zuo gonggongchiche xiang ke. I eat breakfast ride bus attend school. There are no prepositions either. You express relationships with nouns and verbs, and with word order. In Chinese the only way to do this is to repeat many of the words. It works because words are shorter in Chinese. A simple sentence in Chinese has about 2/3 the number of syllables as in English. So in a complex sentence you repeat a few of the words and you end up with no more syllables than in English. Muchin na pingguo gei haizi, bu na xigua. Mother carry apple give child, not carry watermelon. (Sorry, I don't know the word for "peach.") Muchin na pingguo gei haizi, wai puo bu na. Mother carry apple give child, maternal grandmother not carry. (Sorry, I can't remember the word for "aunt.") Muchin na pingguo gei xiansheng, bu gei haizi. Mother carry apple give husband, not give child. You got that right. 1. The grammar is difficult because of the conjugation of verbs and the declension of nouns and adjectives. Our verb infinitives have no endings, and the other forms take only three endings, one of which is absolutely invariable. (The present participle ending "-ing.") Our nouns take only one ending for plural, and none for case. Adjectives aren't declined at all. Only pronouns have cases, and just one: accusative. I/me, he/him, etc. 2. The syntax is difficult because, as you say, the word order is more flexible. But a foreigner can still easily get it wrong. 3. The phonetics are difficult because many of the phonemes don't exist in English. (Polish and Russian ŠČ, the Russian vowel Y, Czech Ř, the palatalized dental consonants D T N L in almost the entire language family.) And because you string consonants together in unbelievable combinations. (Czech vstup=entrance, čtvrtek=Thursday, kniha=book.) I spent some time in Ljubljana, and frankly I don't think Slovene is as hard for us as Czech or Polish. In fact the whole South Slavic family -- Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, etc. -- seemed easier to prounounce than Russian or Czech. Of course the grammer may be harder (if that's possible!), I didn't stay long enough to begin to learn it. Getting back to my beginning statement about the advantage of being bilingual, or in my case 1 1/2 lingual -- or really 1 plus many small fractions lingual. I was staring at this pie that I brought home from the market earlier and left on the table. I felt like having some, but there was no fork nearby. I considered being a slob and trying to eat it with my fingers. Then I found the following sentence in my head: "I hold fork eat pie." Not "I will eat the pie with a fork." I was thinking in Chinese syntax! See how valuable it is to know more than one language? My day would not have been complete if I hadn't been able to think that. Haha.
Plus, we have the dual. 18 case forms for each noun to learn; plus some specials, as some nouns go by two patterns or have other special endings. Chinese is extremely analytical. And yes, I don't like it much. It requires a completely different approach than Slavic. But the whole point of syntax is around these grammatical interrelations between words! A verb or a preposition commands a certain case -- and this is "holding the sentence together". In English, and even more in Chinese, all these relationships have to be "in the head", while in the Slavic, Latin and in German you can virtually point them out on endings -- you can say "this word belongs with this word in such and such manner". Oh yes, you don't have dj, tj, nj, lj. Here's a nice Slovene one: vzbrst (I don't know the exact English word, but the noun comes from the verb vzbrsteti, 'to grow new leaves, branches, blossoms'). These are not exactly just consonants -- they are syllabic consonants, the sonorants [m, n, v, r, l, j]. A word like vzbrst is made of two syllables: vz-brst, [uz-b6rst], the 6 is standing for the semivowel, and a v becomes a semivowel in certain positions. The whole things looks as if those words were full of consonants, but this isn't necessarily true; often it is the writing that seems misleading. Yay, I know a forum member who has been in my country! Grand! How come? Trust me, it is hard. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I used to teach some Americans Slovene -- my, did they butcher it. And we also had a German teacher who had been here for 5 years, and fluent in Latin -- but he said he just couldn't learn Slovene, it was too damn hard. Yup! *** Anyway, to come back to the punctuation issue: Always?
I forgot about the dual. I never got that far in Russian class. No, you don't have to hold the relationships in your head. The basic relationship is obvious from the proximity of the words and a total of about two particles, and the subtleties are expressed by other nouns and verbs. The particle "de" is used to parse clauses where one could get lost in the relationships. If you said Ji qi jiao ta che fang, Motor gas leg stride vehicle building The listener wold have a hard time figuring out the construction. But if you say Ji qi jiao ta che de fang, Motor gas leg stride vehicle *connection* building The listener realizes that a motor gas leg stride vehicle is a motorcycle, so you're saying "motorcycle garage." As for the subtleties, instead of saying "The book is in the car," you say Shu zai che li mian. Book occupy vehicle interior location. Very precise. Prepositions in our language are left over from the Stone Age. Each of them has a hundred meanings. It's much clearer to use a noun or verb to say what you mean. English is moving in that direction. In my lifetime I've seen the rise of a new way of building relationship words. We now have compound words like "user-friendly" and "cable-ready," that would not have been invented a hundred years ago. Of course I'm simplifiying by translating each syllable as one word. Those are their basic meanings, but very few Chinese one-syllable words are ever used singly. Pronouns, colors, a few basic concepts, that's all. Everything else is done with compounds. Since Chinese phonetics only provides 1,600 unique one syllable words, they all have dozens of synonyms. But compounds don't. Jiao, ta, and che individually could mean any number of things, but there's only one compound word jiao-ta-che, and that means bicycle. If it sounds difficult to memorize, it's no harder than two- or three-syllables in our languages, and in fact it's easier because once you learn the word and study the root words that it's constructed from, it becomes easier to remember because the meaning is logical. I forgot how you spell those sounds in the Latin alphabet. The Serbs even use the Latin letter J in their modified Cyrillic alphabet, don't they. Spanish has the nj and lj sounds and Mandarin Chinese has sounds pretty close to dj and tj. Interesting. Czech does not count any consonants as vowels in any circumstance. The Czech accent is invariably on the first syllable. "Ctvrtek" is pronounced with the accent on the E. The C and the V are not treated as vowels. In 1973 I bought a BMW motorcycle at the factory in Munich and spent 11 weeks riding around Europe, mostly in the east, where almost all of my Esperanto pen-pals lived. I visited a friend in Thessaloniki, Greece, and one in Nis, Serbia. From there I headed west to Spain, so I passed through much of what was then Yugoslavia. I got to see Sarajevo while it was still there. When I was in Varna, Bulgaria, my hotel had a special sale on a tour to Beirut, three days and two nights for $100. I said to myself, "Well you can't see everything in one trip. I can always come back and see Beirut another time." I've been kicking myself for a long time over that one. No, of course not. There are no absolute statements. Including this one. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
