This research investigated issues related to normalizing punctuation marks from a text retrieval perspective. A punctuated-centric approach was undertaken by exploring changes in meanings, whitespaces, words retrievability, and other issues related to normalizing punctuation marks. To investigate punctuation normalization issues, various frequency counts of punctuation marks and punctuation patterns were conducted using the text drawn from the Gutenberg Project archive and the Usenet Newsgroup archive. A number of useful punctuation mark types that could aid in analyzing punctuation marks were discovered. This study identified two types of punctuation normalization procedures: (1) lexical independent (LI) punctuation normalization and (2) lexical oriented (LO) punctuation normalization. Using these two types of punctuation normalization procedures, this study discovered various effects of punctuation normalization in terms of different search query types. By analyzing the punctuation normalization problem in this manner, a wide range of issues were discovered such as: the need to define different types of searching, to disambiguate the role of punctuation marks, to normalize whitespaces, and indexing of punctuated terms. This study concluded that to achieve the most positive effect in a text retrieval environment, normalizing punctuation marks should be based on an extensive systematic analysis of punctuation marks and punctuation patterns and their related factors. The results of this study indicate that there were many challenges due to complexity of language. Further, this study recommends avoiding a simplistic approach to punctuation normalization.

The purpose of this study was to examine more deeply the relationship between pause location and duration and its connection to clause and phrase boundaries for native English speakers (NESs). Previous research has shown pauses produced by NESs to be located at clause boundaries (Brown & Miron, 1971; Hawkins, 1971; Tavakoli, 2011), but little empirical work has been done to probe this issue further. For this research, 80 speech samples, 40 male and 40 female, were randomly selected from the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) representing different regions in the United States. Oral data from the read-aloud portion of the samples were used for this research. The grammatical structures within the speech sample were tagged, and the filled and unfilled pauses were marked for location and duration. The utterances were analyzed for pauses occurring at grammatical boundaries and punctuation marks. The results showed that 91.5% of all pauses in the speech samples were found after clauses, phrases, or punctuation marks, leaving only 8.5% to occur within these structures. The number of pauses per boundary out of the potential pauses at those boundaries was also analyzed. The findings from this study indicate that NESs pause after 94.2% of the available periods, 69.4% of the clauses, 44.7% of the commas, and 5.7% of the phrases. In addition to these findings on pause location, pauses were found to be longest at clause and period boundaries with average pause lengths of 652 ms and 734 ms respectively and shortest at phrase and comma boundaries with average pause lengths of 471 ms and 511 ms respectively. The results also showed that these differences were statistically significant between clauses and phrases as well as periods and commas. Although filled pauses were marked, no meaningful findings can be reported due to there only being a total of 10 filled pauses in all 80 speech samples. Gender differences were also statistically significant when measuring pause duration with the average pause length of males being 659 ms and those of females being 550 ms. In addition to providing new empirical evidence describing NESs' use of pausing, these findings have potential implications to help non-native English speakers (NNESs) improve their use of pausing in English as a means of enhancing their fluency and intelligibility.

This paper employs Ricoeur's Interpretation Theory to analyze the affect the exclamation mark has on the readers' interpretation of five Book of Mormon editions. Each unique instance of exclamation was obtained with its accompanying verse and these were coded by three coders for the genre they appeared in, the syntactic structures of their utterances, and the rhetorical function of the exclaimed proposition. This made possible a comparison of the exclaimed themes both within and across each genre and across each of the five editions analyzed. While the 1830 edition was found to have many exclamations in the genres of conversation and speech with emphasis on the themes of the love of God, the sacrifice of Christ, and the carnal nature of man, the 1920 edition by contrast saw emphasis mainly in the genres of prayer and aside on the call to repentance, the calamities of hell, and the need to call upon God's grace to overcome the many sins that will beset the latter generation of readers.

This thesis deals with Czech and Italian punctuation. The aim is to compare the rules of the punctuation usage in the Czech language with the rules in the Italian language. In the first, theoretical, part there are firstly introduced the sources on which the whole work is based. Then the very notion of punctuation is explained from the both Czech and Italian perspective. Next, there is defined which particular punctuation marks are going to be further examined. The following chapters provide a list of rules of the punctuation usage in Czech and Italian with an emphasis on the similarities and the differences between the two languages. The work also tries to offer a comprehensive look at both languages. In conclusion, there is a practical part to verify the acquired knowledge. It is a series of exercises with a key of the correct answers.

Darbo tema – skyrybos principai ir jų taikymas XIX a. autorių J. S. Dovydaičio ir M. Akelaičio rašytiniuose tekstuose. Lietuvių kalbos skyrybos sistema nėra ištirta ir aprašyta, todėl labai svarbu išsiaiškinti, kokia skyryba vyravo tuo metu, kai dar nebuvo konkrečių skyrybos taisyklių. Darbe analizuojami XIX a. tekstų skyrybos vartojimo principai, tiriama skyrybos sistemos istorinė raida, aiškinami dėsningumai, kurių pagrindu formavosi dabartinės skyrybos normos. Ištyrus vientisinio sakinio skyrybą J. S. Dovydaičio ir M. Akelaičio apysakose, galima teigti, kad bejungtukių vienarūšių sakinio dalių, išplėstinių prepozicinių pažyminių ir postpozicinių išplėstinių priedėlių skyryba tirtuose tekstuose buvo nuosekli. Vis dėlto kitais atvejais vientisinio sakinio skyryba dar įvairavo. Atlikus sudėtinio sakinio analizę, paaiškėjo, kad šalutinių dėmenų skyryba M. Akelaičio tekste jau buvo nusistovėjusi (paprastai skiriama taip, kaip dabar), o J. S. Dovydaičio tekste ryškių dėsningumų nepastebėta. Sujungiamuosius sudėtinio sakinio dėmenis apysakų autoriai paprastai skiria, išskyrus atvejus, kai skyrybos ženklas nededamas prieš jungtukus ir, o, bet. Pastebimos ryškios bejungtukių sudėtinio sakinio dėmenų skyrybos tendencijos; svarbu tai, kad skyrybos ženklas pasirenkamas atsižvelgiant į šių dėmenų semantinius santykius (išvardinimas, aiškinimas, apibendrinimas ir kt.). M. Akelaičio tekste tiesioginės kalbos ir citatų skyryba daugeliu atvejų sutampa su šiandien galiojančiomis skyrybos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The theme of the work is The Principles and Application of Punctuation in the Written Texts of the 19th Century Authors J.S. Dovydaitis and M. Akelaitis. The punctuation system of Lithuanian language has not been studied and described and it is very significant to study the punctuation that has prevailed at the time when there was no set rules. This work analyses the principles of punctuation in the 19th century, the historical development of punctuation system; and explains the tendencies that served as a basis for the rules of the modern punctuation system. The analysis of the simple sentence in the above mentioned texts has revealed that the punctuation of asyndetic homogeneous parts of the sentence, extended prepositive attribute and postpositive extended apposition has been already consistent. However in other cases the punctuation of the simple sentence has been varied. The analysis of the composite sentence has revealed that the punctuation of the subordinate clauses had been settled in the works by M. Akelaitis (in most cases the punctuation corresponds to the modern punctuation); whereas the text of J. S. Dovydaitis does not manifest many regularities. The authors separate the compound components of the complex sentence by punctuation marks, except for the conjunctions ir, o, bet (and, but) where punctuation marks are not used. One can observe distinct punctuation tendencies in the asyndetic complex sentences; the punctuation mark is selected according to the... [to full text]

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This study explores various aspects of the spelling and punctuation development of six Tohono O'odham (Papago) children during their third and fourth grade years. The data used, which was collected in a prior study, consisted of 215 texts (13,793 words) written in natural classroom settings as part of the teacher's ongoing writing curriculum. Field notes decribing what the subjects did as they wrote, as well as written interviews, supplemented the texts themselves. A number of specific features were examined to explore the subjects' use of various level of linguistic information about spelling. Those features included: initial letters, vowel phonemes, consonant digraphs, the letters C and G, consonant gemination, bound morphemes, and homophones. Spellings involving permutation (changes in letter order) and the letters E and Y as final markers, as well as those spellings which were real words, were also examined. Finally, differences between spellers, the subjects' use of punctuation and capitalization, and orthography in the classroom context were analyzed. A number of conclusions were drawn from the analysis. The subjects spelled most words conventionally. The more frequently a word appeared in the subjects' writing, the more likely it was to be spelled conventionally. Selected orthographic features varied widely in how conventionally they were spelled, with those which were less predictable or more abstract tending to be more difficult. Almost every spelling feature examined showed growth from third to fourth grade. The invented spellings of particular features tended to reflect understandable, logical processes. Invented spellings which were either real words or permutations of the intended word were common. There were differences between children not only in how conventionally they spelled but in the types of invented spellings they produced. Punctuation was more difficult than spelling for the subjects, and its use varied greatly between subjects. Capitalization was comparable to spelling in how conventionally it was used. Children used a variety of linguistic information and spelling strategies as they wrote. There was evidence that punctuation usage was driven (at least in some cases) by conscious hypotheses about how it works. Children's metalinguistic knowledge about orthography may or may not parallel their use of it.

Darbe pristatomas daugtaškio vartojimas grožiniuose tekstuose. Kadangi skyrybos intonacinis-pauzinis ir prasmės principai vis labiau akcentuojami, tiriama daugtaškio įtaka teksto emociniam ir ekspresiniam atspalviui, intonacijai, prasminiams akcentams, raiškos gyvumui. Tiriamąją medžiagą sudaro pavyzdžiai su 1876 daugtaškiais, pavartotais neoromantizmo atstovės Šatrijos Raganos apysakų rinkinyje „Sename dvare“ ir postmodernistų Renatos Šerelytės romane „Vardas tamsoje“ ir Mariaus Ivaškevičiaus romane „Žali“. Autoriai pasirinkti siekiant palyginti rašymo laikotarpiams (juos skiria šimtmetis), tekstų tipams, pasirinktos literatūros krypčiai būdingą autorinę skyrybą. Teorinės žinios apie daugtaškį lyginamos su realia ženklo vartosena, aiškinamasi, kokias funkcijas tiriamuose tekstuose jis atlieka, aptariami galimi daugtaškio sinonimai. Nemažai dėmesio skiriama vartojimo dažnumo tyrimui statistiniu metodu. / This Master’s thesis presents the use of suspension points in the imaginative texts. As the intonation pause and meaning principles of punctuation are more and more emphasized, the influence of suspension points has been analyzed from the point of the emotional and expressive shade, intonation, meaningful focus, vividness of expression. The research material consists of 1876 examples of suspension points used in the collection of stories “In an Old Manor” by Satrijos Ragana and in the novels of post-modern writers: “The Name in the Darkness” by Renata Serelyte and the novel “The Greens” by Marius Ivaskevicius. The authors have been chosen aiming to compare the authors’ punctuation characteristic to the writing periods (the difference between them is one hundred years), types of the texts, and the chosen trend in literature. The theoretical knowledge about the suspension points have been compared with the real use of the punctuation mark, it has been targeted to ascertain what are the functions of this punctuation mark in the analyzed texts, the possible synonyms of suspension points have been discussed in the thesis. Great attention has been paid to the analysis of the usage frequency applying statistical method.

A escrita é uma ferramenta poderosa utilizada pelo homem desde que ele descobriu que poderia se comunicar sobre um suporte fixo e não somente pela fala. Ao longo dos anos, o homem desenvolveu essa ferramenta e o suporte onde ela era inserida, transformando e desenvolvendo ambos através de papiros, pergaminhos e códices, até chegar à imprensa, que revolucionou de vez a escrita com a introdução dos sinais de pontuação na mesma. Com o passar dos anos e com o advento da literatura moderna, o suporte textual foi cada vez sendo mais valorizado e trabalhado, até chegarmos a escritores modernos como Samuel Beckett. Mas por que ritmo e escrita? Porque ambos estão intimamente relacionados: não existe escrita sem ritmo. De fato, não há discurso sem ritmo, pois ele é organizado pelo ritmo. Assim, a sintaxe e a pontuação fazem parte do jogo rítmico textual. Pode-se dizer que ritmo, sintaxe e pontuação formam uma tríade poderosa e analisar esses elementos nos três últimos romances de Samuel Beckett é um trabalho importante para se mostrar um trabalho inovador com o ritmo e a escrita. / Writing is a powerful tool used by man since he discovered he could communicate on a fixed support, not only through speech. Over the years, man has developed this tool and support where it was inserted, transforming and developing both through papyrus scrolls and codices, until you get to the press, which revolutionized the writing of time with the introduction of punctuation marks in it. Over the years and with the advent of modern literature, the textual support was increasingly being more valued and worked until we reach modern writers as Samuel Beckett. But why rhythm and writing? Because both are intimately related: there is no writing without rhythm. In fact, there is no speech rhythm as it is organized by the rhythm. Thus, syntax and punctuation are part of textual rhythm game. You could say that rhythm, syntax and punctuation form a powerful triad and analyze these elements in the last three novels of Samuel Beckett is an important job to show innovative work with the rhythm and writing.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T18:10:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Na área de ensino de língua materna, vários trabalhos vêm discutindo questões relacionadas à didatização do gênero. Um ponto, entretanto, pouco tem sido contemplado: a relação entre gênero e elementos de estruturação lingüística. Dolz e Schneuwly (2004) são bastante enfáticos a esse respeito ao afirmarem que uma seqüência didática não deve contemplar itens de estruturação de línguas, entre os quais está incluída a pontuação. Tais conhecimentos, segundo os autores, precisam ser construídos em outros momentos, tratando-se, nas seqüências, apenas das características específicas do gênero escolhido. Esta dissertação objetiva fazer avançar a reflexão sobre a possibilidade de um item de estruturação de língua como a pontuação, por ser necessário à constituição de determinado gênero, fazer parte da seqüência que o explore. Nesse sentido, este trabalho apresenta os resultados de uma proposta de ensino de língua materna que buscou incluir o estudo da pontuação em seqüência didática sobre o gênero textual conto humorí / In the research field of first language acquisition, several studies have discussed issues related to the approaching of genres in the classroom. One issue, however, has not completely been dealt with: the relation between genre and elements of the linguistic structure. Dolz and Schneuwly (2004) strongly claim that a didactic sequence does not have to embrace items of the linguistic structuring, within which punctuation is included. Such a knowledge, they argue, have to be constructed in different moments. In the sequences, only the specific features of the selected genre should be dealt with. This dissertation aims at advancing the reflection upon the possibility of an item of the linguistic structuring, such as punctuation, be part of the sequence that explores a certain genre, since punctuation is considered necessary for the constitution of the genre. In this way, this study presents the result of a proposal for the first language classroom that tried to include punctuation as an item to be studied in a d