Western punctuation marks originated in ancient Greece. Zhu Lin said that in the 5th century BC, Greek inscriptions were written in words, and only occasionally words were separated by two consecutive points and three consecutive points. The great scholar Aristotle (384-322 BC) mentioned in Rhetoric that the works of the philosopher Heraclitus (540-470 BC) are difficult to break sentences because of continuous writing. Zhu Lin pointed out that the founder of the western new punctuation system was Italian jurist and publisher A Manutius (about 1450 ~ 15 15). He used grammar principle instead of reading principle, and made five kinds of printed punctuation marks: comma (,) and semicolon (; ), colon (:), period (. ) and question mark (? )。 His family published nearly a thousand books in a hundred years and sold them all over Europe. These basic punctuation marks are widely used in various languages. European languages gradually formed their own punctuation system, and English punctuation was not completed until the late18th century.
For thousands of years, the development and changes of punctuation marks in Chinese and some western languages are very different, and from a macro perspective, they also have similar trajectories. That is, through the connection of words, words and sentences, punctuation or non-punctuation is gradually used to break words and sentences; Different regions, different viewpoints and different schools use different punctuation marks, and gradually seek common ground while reserving differences by putting aside differences, and adopt a unified or basically unified punctuation system within a language.
What is intriguing is that human beings have created splendid civilizations in ancient times, but it is difficult to create a few punctuation marks. China created the Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, and the unearthed Oracle bones have about 4,500 words (about one third of which are recognizable). Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty collected 9 353 seal characters. From then until the late Qing Dynasty, there was only one sentence (. ), read (,), to emphasize (. ), which means proper noun (-), and so on. , and these punctuation marks are often mixed with other symbols, such as comment symbols. It was not until 1920 that the Ministry of Education of Beiyang Government published the Proposal for Promulgating New Punctuation that it became a punctuation series of 12.
Ancient Greek civilization is dazzling. Around the 5th century BC, a large number of philosophers emerged, leaving a lot of literature on philosophy, history, literature and natural science for later generations. However, it was not until aristophanes (257 BC ~ 65438 BC+080 BC), the director of Alexandria Library in the Hellenistic era, that three-level dot numbers were created: the middle point (), the upper point () and the lower point (), which became a sequence from scratch and were precious. Punctuation marks in several major European languages were not finalized until the end of 18 and the beginning of the 20th century.
Punctuation marks are much simpler in shape and less in number than words. Why can you create words a long time ago, but the systematic punctuation is late, so is the East and the West? This is a question worthy of consideration by researchers in the history of civilization.
Exclamation mark is the creation of Italian humanists in the second half of14th century. The earliest exclamation point in the existing literature can be found in the Latin book On the Nobleness of Law and Medicine (1399) written by Colutjo Salutatti, the consul and writer of Florence (see Chapter 2.2). Books published in Germany began to use exclamation marks in the16th century. Interjections in English and Russian appeared in1at the beginning of the 7th century. Shakespeare wrote The Story of Winter at1610 ~1611,and called it an exclamation point. Ben Jonson, a contemporary playwright of Shakespeare, said that when a sentence expresses admiration, an exclamation point is used. 1657 English exclamation point begins to use modern name exclamation point.
In 1897, Wang wrote 10 punctuation marks in pinyin, including "signs of mourning" (! ) and "amazing numbers" (). 1909 Lu Xun put forward four new punctuation marks in the Collection of Foreign Novels, including (! ), which means "loudly". 19 19 the proposal on promulgating new punctuation marks was named "exclamation mark"; 195 1, the usage of punctuation is renamed as "exclamation point"; After 1990, the official name was simplified to "exclamation point".
/kloc-in the 6th century, there appeared two schools of western punctuation, namely, recitation school and syntax school, which mainly evolved from Greek and Latin in the classical period, and entered a stable stage after/kloc-in the 7th century. Russian punctuation comes from Greek, and western European punctuation was adopted in18th century.
There are no punctuation marks in ancient Chinese characters, and19th century began to use them. "As a sentence. In the 8th century, Japan used kickbacks and training points as punctuation system.
The first person who introduced punctuation marks from abroad was Zhang Deyi, a student of Wentong Museum in the late Qing Dynasty. Wentong Pavilion was established by the Qing government to train foreign language talents in the Westernization Movement. Zhang Deyi is one of the first students in the English class.
In February of the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), the former ambassador to China Pu led the "China Mission" to visit Europe and America and became a member of the delegation. Zhang Deyi has a habit. No matter which country he goes to, he likes to record the local scenery, people's feelings and customs, and compile a booklet in the name of "telling anecdotes". During the period from 1868 to 1869, he finished Tell Strange Man Again. Now this book is called Travels in Europe and America, with a punctuation mark to introduce the West. It says, "Books from western countries in Thailand are boring to read and boring to explain. If this sentence is meaningful enough, remember "."; If you are not satisfied, remember','; Although the meaning is not enough, the meaning is bonded with the previous sentence, remember';' ; If the meaning is not enough, add a sentence outside, and then write ":"; If you are surprised and admired, please remember "!" ; If you ask a question, remember? ; Quote the classics and write'' at the beginning of the sentence; Add a note, write' ()' before and after the sentence; At the junction of these two paragraphs, add a horizontal line, such as'-'. "Although Zhang Deyi unconsciously introduced punctuation marks into the domestic intellectual circles, even with a tone of opposition, he felt that these punctuation marks were cumbersome, but in the process of inadvertently planting willows, it brought a new wind to the development of language symbols in China.
19 19 In April, six professors, Hu Shi, Qian, Zhou Zuoren and Ma Yuzao, were extremely reluctant to read "newspapers and books nowadays, no matter what kind of articles are in a dense circle, not only don't talk about grammatical differences, but even have no meaning of appreciation". At the first meeting of the preparatory meeting of the national unified language and writing, they put forward a "plan" and asked the government to promulgate the general rules. ; :? ! -() ""Equipunctuation.
1920 On February 2nd, the Ministry of Education of Beiyang Government issued the No.53 instruction-"Use new punctuation marks in general orders", and the first set of legal new punctuation marks in China was born.