AContrastiveStudyofPunctuationinChineseandEnglishAContrastiveStudyofPunctuationinChineseandEnglish
Ⅰ.Introduction.Introduction
A.Thedefinitionofthepunctuationmarks
Thepunctuationmarksareaseriesofmarkswhichareusedtoseparatethewrittenlanguage
intosentencesorphrases,thankstowhichwecanreadfluentlyandunderstandosentencesorphrases,thankstowhichwecanreadfluentlyandunderstandeasily.
B.Theoriginofpunctuationmarks
Theoriginofpunctuationmarksislostinthemistsoftime.TheRomanshadneither
punctuationmarksnorspacesbetweentheirwordsandpunctuationmarksarenotusedinancient
China.ThefirstknownexampleofpunctuationmarksisfoundinHamletwhichcontainsmostof
thesimpleformsofpunctuationmarks.AnearlierexampleinanEtruscanloveletterisdisputed,
asitmightjustbealittleheartoverthe“I”.
Mostscientistsbelievethatpunctuationarosethroughgradualevolution.Itisspeculated
thattheoriginalpunctuationmarkswasaperiodformedbyamosquitoswattedbyanancient
scribe.Thecommawouldthennaturallyarisefromaswatwhichsmearedthemosquitoacolon
fromtwomosquitoesandsoon.Others,however,disputethisclaimandassertthatpunctuations
suitabilityforuseisclearevidenceofintelligentdesignlikelycarriedoutbyeitherOscarWildeor
theFlyingSpaghettiMonster
C.Thefunctionofthepunctuationmarks.
Thepunctuationmarkscanseparatethesentencesandindicatewheretostop.Itiscalledthe
grammaticalfunction.Forexample,Ilovemycountry.Inthisexample,thefullstopmarkmeans
thewholesentenceisover.
Anotherfunctionisrhetoricalfunction.Somepunctuationmarkscanbeusedinrhetoric.For
example,Women“suffer”athome.Inthissentence,“suffer”notonlymeanslivebadl