Current Approaches to Punctuation in Computational Linguistics

Some recent studies in computational linguistics have aimed to take advantage of various cues presented by punctuation marks. This short survey is intended to summarise these research efforts and additionally, to outline a current perspective for the usage and functions of punctuation marks. We conclude by presenting an information-based framework for punctuation, influenced by treatments of several related phenomena in computational linguistics. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers

An information-based approach to punctuation

Ankara : Department of Computer Engineering and Information Science and the Institute of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 1998.Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Bilkent University, 1998.Includes bibliographical references leaves 83-93.Say, BilgePh.D

Maniat Laments as Narratives: Forms and Norms of Entextualization

This thesis studies Maniat laments as narratives in folkloristic contexts. It focuses on a manuscript collection of Maniat laments which was compiled around 1930-35 by Ioannis Strilakos (a philologist from Gerolimenas, 1911-1949); it also draws on data from ethnographic fieldwork and published collections. Texts from the collection that refer to killings or abductions (sensational laments) have been compiled in a digital corpus following the latest standards in textual encoding in order to facilitate textual analyses. The study proposes an eclectic language-focused approach to verbal art following recent trends in the study of oral poetics (Bauman and Briggs 1990) and narrative analysis (Labov 1997, Ochs and Capps 2001) brought together by critical perspectives on discourse and culture in sociolinguistics (Blommaert 2005). First of all, the analysis identifies an ethnopoetic-narrative patterning and its variations in relation to prototypical structures of oral experience narratives. The identified prototypical structures are viewed along a set of narrativity dimensions which define their conventionalisation and entextualisabilityt on a continuum that encompasses laments performed in both ritual and non-ritual contexts. Secondly, this study explores the way norms of language have been deployed in practices of recording, selecting, editing, transcribing and publishing laments either emphasising their 'canonical' textual shape or adding new meanings through orthopraxies. The latter are illustrated in the hybrid register in which the texts in the manuscript collection have been recorded, pointing to synergies between orality and literacy norms and revealing the complexity of the natural histories of verbal art

An apostrophe to Scots: the invention and diffusion of the Scots apostrophe in eighteenth-century Scottish verse

The intention of this thesis is to challenge three fundamental assumptions about the function of the ‘apologetic apostrophe’ – described henceforth as the ‘Scots apostrophe’ – which have, until now, exclusively characterised the scholarly understanding of this linguistic form in Scots literary history: 1. The function of apostrophised spelling forms in Scots is to indicate elision. 2. The use of apostrophised forms undermines perceptions of Scots as a language independent from English and is solely for the benefit of accessibility for an English readership. 3. Scots is intrinsically linked with Scottishness: as an agent of anglicisation, the use of apostrophised forms therefore contributes to the erosion of Scottish cultural identity. Situated within historical pragmatics – and combining corpus and philological analysis – this study investigates the origin and diffusion of the Scots apostrophe in eighteenth-century Scottish literary verse, with particular attention paid to the influential poetic miscellanies of James Watson, Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, and Walter Scott. First and foremost, this thesis establishes a theoretical framework with which to understand the function of the Scots apostrophe in literary Scots that simultaneously contests unscholarly myth-making with regards to linguistic practices. In broader terms, the research therein demonstrates the value of non-lexical markers, like the apostrophe, as a capacious avenue for future historical pragmatic research

Current Approaches to Punctuation in Computational Linguistics

Some recent studies in computational linguistics have aimed to take advantage of various cues presented by punctuation marks. This short survey is intended to summarise these research efforts and additionally, to outline a current perspective for the usage and functions of punctuation marks. We conclude by presenting an information-based framework for punctuation, influenced by treatments of several related phenomena in computational linguistics