- •Л. Л. Баранова
- •L. L. Baranova
- •Isbn 978-5-7429-0346-8
- •Foreword
- •Introduction
- •The Dialectical Unity of the Oral and Written Forms of English.
- •Their Interrelationship. Feature Level vs. Semantic Level.
- •The Segmental and Suprasegmental Approaches
- •Levels of cognition
- •The English Articulation Basis
- •Phonotactics
- •False etymology
- •High fall
- •Low Fall
- •Exclamation Mark
- •The Comma41
- •Subordination
- •The Semicolon45
- •The Colon
- •The Dash
- •The Indented Line
- •Conclusion
- •English consonant clusters
- •Postvocalic clusters
- •Intervocalic clusters
- •Syllabification
- •Accentual Types of Words
- •The Minimal Pairs Approach
- •The Rules of Reading56
- •I. In accented syllables
- •II. In unaccented syllables.
- •I. In accented syllables
- •II. In unaccented syllables
- •I. In accented syllables
- •II. In unaccented syllables.
- •I. In accented syllables
- •II. In unaccented syllables
- •I. In accented syllables
- •References
- •Contents
The Semicolon45
The parts linked by a semicolon are not as fully independent as in the case of a full stop. The non-finality of parts separated by a semicolon is reflected in the length of pause, on the one hand, and the choice of pitch-levels to be used for the words it brings together, on the other.
The difference between a full stop and a semicolon in terms of pitch movement is as follows: a low-falling tone of the final variety for the full stop; a non-terminal falling tone for a semicolon. For example:
It is by no means sufficient to be free from faults in speaking and writing; you must do both correctly and elegantly.
Jane Austen is on the curriculum; so is Charlotte Bronte and many others.
Re-read what you have written aloud, or nearly so; you will probably pick up one or two places at which a comma or other stop will make meaning clearer.
A semicolon, then, symbolizes a pause (cessation of phonation) accompanied by a non-terminal falling tone. Let us compare the
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following sentences: “I went to America”, “I went to America, because I wanted to see the world”, and “I went to America; my beautiful British accent has not been properly appreciated there”. We see that a semicolon is used when there are two distinct parts in one sentence. Although they are not semantically connected, the speaker is bent on joining them together, if he does not want to effect the degree of separation expressed by a full stop. To sum up:
a semicolon points to a pause which is longer than the one required in the case of a comma,
before a semicolon a non-terminal falling tone is used,
the first stressed word after the semicolon is never pronounced on a high level, usually on a mid-level or low-level note,
semantically a semicolon may be described as a link between two different ideas joined within one sentence. A full stop divides what precedes the full stop from what follows it; in the case of the semicolon it is the connection with what follows that matters.
The Colon
With the colon it is the pronunciation of the immediately following word which is important, for we begin it on a higher level, as if it were the beginning of a new sentence — hence similarity with the full stop. The difference between the two (the colon and the full stop) is in length of pause and nature of pitch-movement. In the case of a full stop the pause is much longer than in the case of the colon.
Is there any difference between a semicolon and a colon as far as length of pauses is concerned? Probably not. Anyway it is too subtle to be noticed. Both the colon and the semicolon pauses are not as long as the full stop pause; neither are they as short as the one for the comma.
So much, then, for cessation of voice and pitch movement. There are two more parameters which distinguish the colon from the semicolon. They are: high-falling tone and slower tempo. In the case of the semicolon the parts before and after it are, usually, read with one and the same tempo. The part of the sentence
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which follows the colon is read more slowly and carefully. When we use a colon we mean that what follows is explanation or elaboration of what came before. It can be assumed that the prosody of the colon — in spite of inevitable contextual variations — always remains semiblogically the same. For example:
To reiterate: the ’technical student often stops at RE (Restricted English).
The sentence was poorly constructed: it ’lacked both unity and coherence.
The rule may be shortly expressed: the ’copulative relative clause is marked off by commas, but not the restrictive. Three countries were represented: ’England. France and Belgium.
What, then, is the difference between the colon, the semicolon, and the comma? Briefly it may be summed up in the following way: the colon enumerates and repeats, the comma indicates the nature of the grammatical relationship, the semicolon says something that is different from what came before, but somehow relevant to it. The difference between the colon and the semicolon is predominantly semantic. When we choose the one or the other, it depends on what we want to say.