The graphic coherence: studying the syntagmatic status of Japanese punctuation markers

The generally accepted approach to punctuation marks has always tended to treat it mostly as graphemes, being characterized by a rather limited use of the conventional apparatus of grammatical analysis. One of the many unexplored issues is the syntagmatic status of punctuation units, i.e. their position on the scale from bound morphemes to free word-forms (the scale of syntagmatic independence). As far as the status of non-punctuational language units is concerned, this field is well-elaborated within word-oriented morphology, by scholars seeking to identify the defining syntagmatic properties of the word. Simple observations suggest that punctuation markers do vary significantly in their syntagmatic autonomy. However, the theoretical tools and methods developed by traditionally phonocentric linguistics cannot always be applied to written phenomena to describe such differences and analyse them in a proper way. Thus, the important criterion of phonetic coherence is fundamentally inapplicable to the language system which has its signifiers composed of a non-acoustic substance. The present paper aims to compensate for this theoretical gap, adapting the traditional approach to the issues of syntagmatic boundness, and introduces the concept "graphic coherence", which is specifically relevant to the written language. The study was undertaken to devise a general framework in which the essentially formal, even technical, aspects of punctuation could be viewed as an object of linguistic interest. The research deals with the modern Japanese language and covers the core of its punctuation system as well as a large number of other marks in the periphery. The paper discusses two basic aspects of graphic coherence in detail, namely line breaking rules and blank space configuration. Each punctuation mark is characterised by both parameters. One remarkable result that emerged from the comparison among the marks is a sort of hierarchical relationship between the two aspects. It is noted that the asymmetrical spacing established for a particular mark implies that this mark cannot be separated from the context by a line break, while the opposite is not necessarily true, so the former feature seems to be associated with a more bound status. In an additional section some further observations are made regarding the correlation between the shape and graphic behaviour of punctuation marks, as well as their position in the linear hierarchies that determine the graphic segmentation of a written text.

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