Principles and history of using punctuation in literary discourse

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Principles and history of using punctuation in literary discourse

Zheenbekova Ch., Ala Too International University, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Isakova M., Osh State University, Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Asperdieva Ch., Osh State University, Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

The main stages of the origin of punctuation in the language have been considered. Since punctuation to some extent reflects the rhythm and intonation of the language, its melody, and each language has its own unique phonetics and intonation characteristics, punctuation marks have their own rules of use. The article deals with the peculiarities of using some punctuation marks.

Keywords: punctuation, English language, text, literary discourse.

ПРИНЦИПЫ И ИСТОРИЯ ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЯ ПУНКТУАЦИИ В ЛИТЕРАТУРНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

Жээнбекова Ч. М., Международный университет Ала-Тоо, г. Бишкек, Кыргызстан Исакова М. Т., Ошский государственный университет, г. Ош, Кыргызстан Аспердиева Ч. М., Ошский государственный университет, г. Ош, Кыргызстан punctuation english language text

Аннотация. Рассмотрены основные этапы возникновения пунктуации в языке. Поскольку пунктуация в той или иной степени отражает ритм и интонацию языка, его мелодику, а каждый язык имеет свои уникальные фонетические и интонационные особенности, знаки препинания имеют свои правила употребления. В статье рассматриваются особенности употребления некоторых знаков препинания.

Ключевые слова: пунктуация, английский язык, текст, литературный дискурс.

The emergence of language has been a key factor in the development of society and is an important invention of mankind. We use it for the recording and transmission of information, both at work and at home. In the 21st century, it is hard to imagine a person who does not have the ability to speak or write in an oral or written form. Since the history of language goes back many centuries, linguists have accumulated a huge amount of material for the study of language. Scientists are in search of the laws of language, in search of the rules of language. Many ancient literary monuments and medieval texts have come down to us, allowing us to see the peculiarities of spelling certain words, as well as to trace grammatical and punctuation changes.

Written sources open up a world for the study of various linguistic aspects. The language of each nation has undergone changes in writing and in its alphabetical and lexical composition. Punctuation is an integral part of written language, the key to successful communication, that's why studying its basics, is an important task. O. S. Akhmanova correctly pointed out that punctuation is one of the additional means that allow us to better understand the intent of the author, to go deeper into the content of the work, because punctuation marks can convey such nuances of the statement that cannot be expressed otherwise [1].

We find it hard to imagine that a text could be written without being punctuated. For example, the sentence: "What ridiculous curiosities await you if you don't use punctuation when you write" is uncomfortable to read: it is difficult for the reader to pause, to emphasize key words and to choose intonation. Intonation is an integral part of language in general, not just spoken language. Most people try to determine the intonation and pauses in a sentence even when reading aloud. Punctuation is also an important means of conveying the author's meaning. Ignorance of the signs can be the cause of ridiculous incidents. Let us consider a famous example given by M. Y. Ryabova in "Some features of the functional of modern English punctuation": "Eats, shoots and leaves", an additional comma changes the content of the sentence in a fundamental way, which should have sounded as follows: "Eats shoots and leaves" [2].

And this is not the only example we have. Here's another one for your consideration: "Woman, without her husband, is nothing" or "Woman! Without her, man is nothing". (Woman! Without you, man is nothing). In this case, the words are linked and the signs provide a framework beyond which the linking words do not extend.

Russian and English punctuation share a common European tradition. Russian punctuation is characterised by a more extensive and obligatory use of commas with adjectival clauses than is the case in English. The use of commas with adjectives is more common in Russian than in English punctuation. Since the 17th century, the system of punctuation now used in English has evolved. The origin of the word "punctuation" is dated by the Oxford Dictionary to 1539 [3].

The word "punctuate" means "to interrupt". The word was in use in Hebrew texts for dots in place of vowels.

In general terms, the history of punctuation can be summarized in the following way:

Greek period

The Greeks wrote their texts letter by letter, word by word, and they did not distinguish between upper and lower case. A librarian called Aristophanes found a solution to improve the reading of many scrolls in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. He initiated the further development of punctuation by inventing various signs, including breath marks, which are still used in Greek texts today. Aristophanes introduced dots that were placed in the middle (-), at the end (.) or at the beginning (-) of each line.

The spread of Christianity

The oral tradition of transmitting information became written with the conversion of the population to the Christian faith. The 7th and 8th centuries saw changes in the way letters were written: the majuscule script was replaced by a miniature script; a letter protruding into the margin appeared to indicate a new breath; a space appeared at the end of a sentence and later between words, as Irish and Scottish monks tired of parsing unfamiliar Latin words. Towards the end of the 8th century, Charlemagne had the monk Alcuin develop a uniform alphabet, and this was the beginning of the use of lower-case letters. It was then that Isidore of Seville added to Aristophanes's ideas: the subdistinctio (-) already had the function of the comma, and the superdistinctio (-) marked the end of the sentence.

Becoming a theory of punctuation

There were two schools from the end of the sixteenth century: The School of Eloquence (the treatise The Art of English Poetry), which saw dots or stops as markers of pauses of varying length; the Syntactic School, which won the argument at the end of the seventeenth century, which saw punctuation as a guide to the grammatical construction of sentences, which saw dots or stops as markers of pauses of varying length. Writers now agree that the primary purpose of punctuation is to clarify the grammar of a text. However, they also demand that it takes into account the speed and rhythm of actual speech [6].

Excessive punctuation was common in the eighteenth century: at its worst, there was the use of commas in every adjectival sentence and every separable phrase.

Modernity

The lexicographers G.W. and F. J. Fowler's The King's English (1906) established modern punctuation, which had an influence on punctuation in the United States. However, interrobang (?) is not included in all Microsoft Office fonts. This is despite the existence of typewriters. The punctuation systems we are discussing are the breath-taking one, which serves as a guide when speaking or reading aloud, and the one which reflects the syntactic relationship between different parts of a sentence [4].

As in Kyrgyz, punctuation marks in English are used to separate, group, and define words and sentence elements. They are used to convey pauses, intonation, etc. in written speech.

The scientists analyzed the real relationship between the semiotics of each punctuation mark and the corresponding pronunciation figure, taking into account not only the nature of phonation cessation but also prosodic phenomena. In the course of the successfully conducted complex research, the existence of a close interrelation was confirmed, as well as the mutually unambiguous nature of the relationship between the semiotics of each punctuation mark and its prosodic expression. Research has succeeded in identifying two main groups of punctuation: vertical segmentation and horizontal layering [5]. The former segment speech into syntactically meaningful units (periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, single dashes, red lines). Horizontal punctuation marks (including double quotation marks, single quotation marks, capitals, spaces, parentheses, italics, double dashes, double commas) arrange quotes, direct speech, minor segments and significant fragments of speech in relation to the essence of the statement. The "main layer", consisting of the author's words and thoughts, is "superimposed" by the semantic layer formed by punctuation marks. Harry Shaw, the renowned American editor, writer, lecturer and teacher, who has authored and co-authored many books on the problem of English literature and punctuation, identifies 4 main purposes for the use of punctuation:

- To terminate. Even the most skillful speaker will need to stop, pause, catch breath and start talking again. The basic unit of thought in written language is the sentence. In modern language, the length of a sentence can be anything from one word to hundreds of words, but it still has to have an end somewhere. In speech it is a lowering of the voice and a pause. In writing it is a period, a question mark, an exclamation mark or a triplet.

- To introduce. Commas are probably English's most difficult punctuation mark to use and understand. Here we have a look at some of the most common uses of the comma.

Rules for using comma.

- Comma, in English grammatical usage, is used to join two independent sentences together and to check conjunction (so, and, but, or, nor, for).

- An introductory phrase, prepositional phrase or dependent clause should also be followed by a comma.

- Use commas to separate introductions, prepositional phrases and dependent clauses.

- The use of a comma is the separation of consecutive elements which are of equal importance. A comma is usually used to separate the last element in a series, although English grammar has no explicit rule for separating the last element in a series.

- To use a comma to separate secondary parts of a sentence that are not essential to the understanding of the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

- Comma splices (the joining of two independent sentences with a comma) should be avoided, as should the use of commas. Use a period, semicolon or conjunction in such cases [5].

The most common punctuation marks, such as period, red line, comma, inverted commas and italics, are presented in all their semantic functions. For example, the full stop is used to divide the text into sentences, the red line is used to divide the text into superphrases, the comma separates parts of a complex sentence, double quotation marks emphasize direct speech and italics are used to highlight foreign words and expressions. The following punctuation marks are therefore used in the language: full stop, question mark, comma, exclamation mark, semicolon, colon, parentheses, round and square brackets, hyphen, single quotation mark, double quotation mark. There are two types of punctuation marks: punctuation marks that separate one part of the text from another, and punctuation marks that are part of syntactic constructions. The period, question mark, semicolon and colon are separating punctuation marks. Separators are paired and include parentheses and quotation marks. It should be noted that in English specialist literature, commas and hyphens can be used as both delimiters and punctuation marks. Currently, there is no consensus in the theoretical and reference literature on punctuation as to which punctuation mark should be referred to as a punctuation device and which as a means of graphic design in a written text. Many linguists refer to all punctuation marks, including apostrophes, capital letters, asterisks and italics, as punctuation.

References:

1. Akhmanova, O., & Rolandas, F. (1979). Idzelis. Lingvistika i semiotika. Moscow. (in Russian).

2. Ryabova, M. Yu. (2018). Nekotorye osobennosti funktsionala sovremennoi angliiskoi punktuatsii. Punktuatsiya. Vestnik Kostromskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 24(2), 198-203. (in Russian).

3. Kobrina, N. A., & Malakhovskii, A. V. 1959. Angliiskaya punktuatsiya. Moscow. (in Russian).

4. Maizenger, N. V. (2004). Pozitsionno-soderzhatel'noe i pragmaticheskoe znachenie znakov prepinaniya v sovremennom angliiskom yazyke. Barnaul. (in Russian).

5. Evtushenko, T. G. (2010). Obshchie i osobennosti funktsionirovaniya punktuatsii v russkom i angliiskom nauchnom stile. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, (336), 1114. (in Russian).

Список литературы:

1. Ахманова О., Роландас Ф. Идзелис. Лингвистика и семиотика. М, 1979. 109 с.

2. Рябова М. Ю. Некоторые особенности функционала современной английской пунктуации. Пунктуация // Вестник Костромского государственного университета. 2018. Т 24. № 2. С. 198-203.

3. Кобрина Н. А., Малаховский А. В. Английская пунктуация. М., 1959. 111 с.

4. Майзенгер Н. В. Позиционно-содержательное и прагматическое значение знаков препинания в современном английском языке. Барнаул, 2004.

5. Евтушенко Т Г. Общие и особенности функционирования пунктуации в русском и английском научном стиле // Вестник Томского государственного университета. 2010. № 336. С. 11-14.

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