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Date: | Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:11:30 +0100 |
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Punctuation is indeed the means by which we attempt to reproduce the
pauses, changes of pitch, etc., that arise from grammatical features in
what we say. For example, all appositional phrases and adjectival clauses
that provide non-restrictive information are said at a lower pitch (compare
'The professor who had a bald head came in' -- picking out one professor
from a group, 'restrictive', -- with 'The professor, who had a bald head,
came in' -- one professor, additional non-essential information,
'non-restrictive') . The two commas are therefore essential in the writing
and correspond to the change of pitch. Ask students to say the sentence in
question and they will discover that their own brain already knows the
difference between restrictive and non-restrictive, for they automatically
say the non-restruictive clause at a lower pitch.
Another example is the hyphen. Again one can show students that they
already know about the presence of the hyphen for in saying one, the pitch
always falls for the second part. I ask 'Which would you rather have, a
half-baked pie, or a half baked pie?' The '-baked' is said at a lower pitch
and with a slightly lower volume than 'baked'. The point originally was to
distinguish an adjective that went with the other half of the hyphenated
pair from the case where it governs the following noun: compare 'a
white-hot tap' with 'a white hot tap'.
The period (or full-stop, as we say in Britain) is obviously related to its
grammatical function. Similarly for the comma separating an adverb clause
at the beginning of a sentence from what follows. To omit all punctuation
would suggest that one spoke like the Daleks in 'Doctor Who' -- that is, if
you Americans are acquainted with Doctor Who!
Edmond Wright
Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
Tel.: 00 - 44 - (0)1223 350256
Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33
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