Prosody and punctuation in syntax

Text 2

Express your own opinion of the content of the text.

Discuss the text in class.

Present a summary of the text

Summarize each paragraph from the text in one or two sentences.

Use the vocabulary practiced in tasks 1 and 2 to make up situations of your own.

Explain the meaning of the following words and phrases. Adduce examples of the notions represented.

Make sentences of your own with the vocabulary practiced in the previous task.

Tasks

1. Find the Russian equivalents for the following words and phrases:

a noun of a particular kind; it is obvious that; furthermore; to be compared; to re­quire a fixed order; it is hard to be sure; on the one hand, on the other hand; to hesitate; in a number of cases; the truth of the matter; to lump together; much the same thing is true of; arrangement; to occur naturally; on the basis of; subclasses; subclasses of adverbs; it may be difficult to know; from what has been said thus far, it should be clear that; to subdivide; a large amount of information; a detailed blueprint; to approximate; a rough sketch that ignores fine points and exact dimensions; superficial and general; to handle every detail of the language; explicitly.

Complements; different kinds of modifiers; parts of speech; a number of partly overlapping categories; major word classes; uncountable or mass nouns; intran­sitive; adverbs; idiomatic; a reliable and readable translation; teaching English to foreigners; an incredibly speedy moron.

4. Make your own list of key–units and topical vocabulary

10. Write an essay based on any of the following statements:

1) “ We study the grammar of our own tongue not to learn the language, but to learn something about language”.

2) “The machine will need to be told how to handle every detail of the language if a reliable and readable translation is to be produced”.

3) “A word is not simply a noun or adjective; it is a noun or adjective of a particular kind”.

4) “There is not and cannot be a fixed number of parts of speech”.

5) “All human beings have an intelligence that permits them to learn things they have not been explicitly taught”.

Language exists in speech. Speech may be oral or written. Oral speech is primary. In this respect prosody is most important for the or­ganization of speech. But even if we are dealing with the written speech we reproduce it in our inner speech, so "inner prosody" reflects its construction.

The most important prosodic parameters are: pausation, tonicity, tempo, loudness. The prosodic parameters were discussed already in the first chapter of the present manual. In the present part we shall deal in more detail with the problem of punctuation.

There exist different systems of punctuation for different languages. In Russian, for example, punctuation is logical and obligatory. One must follow strictly the rules of punctuation. In the English language punctua­tion is much more free. It has not only formal-grammatical functions, but also semantic-stylistic. This does not mean, of course, that there are no rules of punctuation in English, but these rules leave much freedom of choice for the writer of a text.

There are two main functions of punctuation: division and specification. By means of punctuation marks we divide the text syntactically into meaningful syntactic units. Punctuation marks may also help to specify, to single out, to emphasize some elements within a text.

For syntax most important are the following marks: period (or a full stop), indented line (paragraph), comma, semicolon, colon, dash, ques­tion mark, exclamation mark.

Full stop is used to mark off the borderlines between sentences. It is very difficult to give a precise definition of a sentence, but as many lin­guists note, sentences should be rather short and should have unity of thought. That will make their meaning plain.

It is even more difficult to give any recommendation as far as the use of the indented line (or a paragraph) is concerned. A paragraph is not only a unit of language, but also of thought. The length of a para­graph should be reasonable and reflect its unity.

Let us now concentrate on the rest of the mentioned above punc­tuation marks and try to understand their function in speech.

Comma. There exist two types of rules in connection with the use of a comma: 1) rules which should more or less be followed and which are rather conventional and 2) those recommendations which may be used depend­ing upon the preference of the author of the text. The first group in­cludes the following:

— adverbial constructions

— homogeneous parts or homogeneous constructions

— appositions

— tag questions

— names or ranks in the case of address

— to separate the utterance from the words with the meaning of
speaking.

— for references in the bibliographies.
For example:

This is the way in which grammarians spend time explaining the older states of a language as a preliminary to their description of the modern lan­guage, implying that the older information will be useful in understanding the modern state of affairs.

Magic formulae, incantations, rhythmical listening of proper names, and many other rites exemplify the intensifying power of words.

But this field, language pathology, is perhaps a rather special justifica­tion for language study.

As Robert Graves said, "The poet has got to master the rules of English grammar, before he attempts to bend or brake them ".

As for the second type of recommendation here the following ones can be mentioned

— to mark the borderline between two clauses within a complex
sentences with the conjunction. In this case comma may or may not
be used, or a semicolon may be used instead of a comma.

— to single out non-clichéd parenthetical insertions. In this case the
author of the text may choose between commas, brackets and dashes.

1. a) In all kinds of discourse one can trace propositional development through cohesion and illocutionary development, and all discourse can be characterized in terms of the relationship between propositions and illocutionary acts.

b) Subjects like history, geography, general science, art and so on draw
upon the reality of the child's own experience and there seems no rea­son why a foreign language should not relate to the "outside world"
indirectly through them.

c) The recognition of the INTER/INTRA distinction was important in
itself: but the lessons learned during the process of its birth, so to speak,
were also of great importance.

2. a) In short, the greater theoretical rigour of Chomskyan linguistics, quite apart from its preoccupation with syntax and with an orientation towards cognitive psychology, led to a reduction in the immediate prac­tical relevance of linguistics for language teachers.

b) Thus the "language awareness" material — if we may use this label to refer to the kinds of reference works we are referring to — which the teacher on the Bloomfieldian "linguistic" line was expected to use consisted of main stream analyses of phonetics, phonemics, and morphemics.

In retrospect we can see that original success of the audio-lingual method was not its basis in linguistics and psychology (i. e. Bloom­fieldian Linguistics and Skinnerian Psychology).

Semicolon. This punctuation mark is used for separation. Usually it occurs between sentences, but this punctuation mark is stronger than a comma, at the same time its use instead of a full stop brings the separated sentences closer, they are apprehended as one global whole. E. g. Weary learners learn little; weary teachers teach little.

Semicolons may divide sentences not only without but also with a conjunction:

Stops should be used as sparingly as sense will permit; but in so far as they are needed for an immediate grasp of the sense or for the avoidance of any possible ambiguity, or occasionally to relieve a very lengthy passage, they should be used as freely as need be.

A semicolon helps the writer to emphasize the important idea, the conclusion of the utterance. E. g. The Company is doing some word on this; it may need supplement.

A semicolon is very often used before the words namely and that is.

Colon. A colon is used before explanation, conclusion, the development of the idea presented in the previous part.

e. g. For the linguist, language is both the end and means of his investi­gation: he has to analyze language, using language.

or Three countries were represented: England, France and Belgium.

In cases of this kind, parts which follow a colon are usually pro­nounced with a specific prosody: the tempo is diminished, the loudness is increased.

A colon may be used to introduce the homogenous parts of the sentence.

e. g. In considering them, the syllabus designer will bear in mind several different aspects of the content: linguistic, situational, notional, functional, and communicative.

Also a colon is used to introduce direct speech.

e. g. Another news report, even more recently, began as follows: "The Prime Minister, when it suits him, may speak the broadest Huddersfield he can manage”.

Dash. A dash is a strong punctuation mark which is usually brought out prosodically in speech.

A dash may be used within a complex sentence to separate its two parts, especially in cases when the second part of the sentence contains explanation, paraphrase, diversification of the previous thought:

e. g. For a linguist, then, considering two alternative usages, one is not "right" and the other "wrong" — the t\vo are merely different.

This case is very close to the situation when a generalization is in­troduced into the contence by means of the dash:

e. g. By materials we mean textbooks, readers workbooks, flashcards, recordings, games, songs, reference books — all the vast range of pedagogi­cal tools that teachers and learners make use of.

A dash may also be used to introduce a construction of the paren­thetical origin, an afterthought:

Just because a community happens to be, anthropologically speaking, primitive, is no reason for arguing that its language is primitive also — for it never is.

The dash may also be used to introduce a paradoxical ending to a sentence:

He makes mistakes, as I do, though not so many or so serious — he has not the same opportunities.

Exclamation and Question marks.

Naturally any exclamation or question needs exclamation or ques­tion mark.

Exclamation mark may be also used to attract the attention of the reader to some idea, expressed in the narrative sentence.

e. g. James IV of Scotland is reputed to have carried out an identical investigation, and it is reported that at the end the children spoke very good Hebrew!

This is the expressive function of the exclamation mark which may also be performed by the question mark.

e. g. But surely, the study of this system of rules is ultimately more im­portant than the study of the actual sentences themselves?

Such cases of the use of the question mark is characteristic of the situations when the author of the text wants to show hesitation, doubt, uncertainty. In this situation these marks naturally require an emphatic prosody, they immediately attract the attention of the reader.

Parenthesis. Parenthetical insertions are usually accompanied by commas, brackets or dashes. Short, almost imperceptible insertions are usually marked off by commas.

e. g. In other words, you, the reader, will receive some samples of lan­guage taken out of the context through the written medium.

Brackets separate longer insertions, or they may be used in the sen­tence which already contains some commas to single out the insertion more obviously. The use of brackets presupposes the stronger degree of separation of the insertion.

e. g. Viewers use their genre knowledge (not necessarily consciously) to know what to expect when they look at the TV magazine and decide what to watch.

Dashes are usually more expressive. Although they may also intro­duce insertions into the text, these insertions are usually rather important for the context:

Tony goes outside with some plastic garbage bags – Charis knows plastic is bad, but she’s found no alternative – and collects up the dead chickens.

The reasonable use of punctuation in English is very important. As Aldus Manutius wrote, “if ideas that are difficult to understand are properly separated, they become clearer; and that, on the other hand, through defective punctuation, may passages are confused and distorted to such a degree, that sometimes with difficulty be understood, or even cannot be understood at all? (Aldus Manutius, Interpungend ratio, 1466, From the translation in Punctuation its Principles and Practice by T.F. and M.F.A. Husband, Routledge, 1905.)

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