PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO A THEORY

OF PUNCTUATION

R. Scott Baldwina
The University of Tulsa
James M. Coady
Ohio University

Abstract. The study consisted of two repeated measures experiments which

explored the relationship between punctuation and grammatical expecta-
tions. In the first experiment, 20 above average fifth-grade readers were
exposed to sets of isolated sentences. Word order conditions were
manipulated to vary the criticalness of individual punctuation cues. The
second experiment was identical to the first except that adult subjects were
used. The combined results of the experiments indicated (a) that individual
punctuation marks varied from critical to redundant as a function of
preceding word order, and (b) that fifth graders, in contrast to adults, tended
to ignore grammatically critical punctuation cues. The experimental
outcomes suggested that punctuation is a late developing cue system in
reading. In addition, the results were interpreted to mean that traditional
punctuation rules are empty conventions which neither predict nor explain
reading behaviors involving punctuation. Specific psycholinguistic rules are
proposed to account for the variable importance of individual punctuation
cues.

Within the context of a psycholinguistic model of reading, no cue system

exists in a vacuum. Grapho-phonic, syntactic, and semantic cues .complement
each other in a complex state of interaction, or redundancy; and the reader,
presumably, is capable of selecting from the redundant characteristics of the
visual display some subset of minimal language cues which facilitate the
processing of written information. If this is true, then psycholinguistic models of
the reading process must ultimately be able to state with precision the conditions
under which specific cues are either redundant or critical to the processing of
meaning from written language. One such cue system is punctuation.
The development of punctuation theory and practice in the history of English
displays a confusing admixture of opposing philosophies. Walter Ong (1944)
a
Reprints may be requested from Dr. Baldwin, 600 South College Ave., Tulsa, Oklahoma
74104.

363
364 Journal of Reading Behavior X,4

points out that the medieval grammarians developed three punctuation marks
"designed primarily to meet the demands of oral reading" (p. 350). They were, in
effect, breath marks. These gradually evolved into the comma, colon, and period
which Brightland described in the early seventeen hundreds as follows:
The Use of these points, Pauses, or Stops, is not only to give a proper
Time for Breathing: but to avoid Obscurity, and Confusion of the Sense
in joining Words together in a sentence, (p. 149)
There is a clear movement here towards a recognition of the sense of manning as
a determinant of punctuation. In short, one can see the beginnings of an
awareness of syntax and the role of punctuation in signaling it.
By 1844, John Wilson could argue that the sense and the grammatical form of
the construction of a passage, and not the rhetorical mode of the delivery, is the
fundamental law by which the art of punctuation should be regulated. A syntac-
tic base for punctuation had completely emerged and, in theory at least, replaced
the earner elocutionary philosophy. Remnants of this earlier conflict, however,
still exist today and can perhaps best be seen in the current teaching dictum that
"commas equal pauses." In this paper, punctuation is assumed to be basically an
orthographic device which signals syntactic patterns to the reader.
The theory behind the present research is that punctuation cues exist on a
continuum which ranges from critical to redundant and that the position which
any given punctuation mark holds on the continuum is determined by 1) the
availablility of alternative syntactic cues to mark surface structure boundaries,
and 2) the availability of semantic cues to confirm or reject syntactic
interpretations. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that readers generate
grammatical expectations which affect the segmentation of written syntax by
influencing the reader's attention to or perception of syntactic boundaries.
The "canonical-clause" concept is one way of relating grammatical
expectations to punctuation. The term "canonical" (Baldwin, 1976, 1977) is
adapted from the speech perception theory of Fodor, Bever, and Garrett (1974).
It refers to the hypothesis that the reader initially assumes that a noun phrase
followed by a verb phrase, followed by a second noun phrase are, respectively,
the subject, main verb, and object of a common clause in statement form. A
clause or sentence which falsely confirms the reader's expectation for a
particular grammatical pattern is termed "noncanonical," and one which
correctly confirms or refutes the expectation is termed "canonical." In sentence
(a) below, readers would tend to expect an object noun phrase to follow the
subject-verb pattern "we eat," and a following noun would tend to confirm this
canonical expectation for an object.

(a) Why can't we eat, John?

(b) John, why can't we eat?
Baldwin, Coady 365

Therefore, "John," which is in this case a noun of direct address, would

sometimes be understood, perhaps temporarily, as the main sentence object in
spite of the punctuation cue. The sentence is, consequently, noncanonical.
Sentence (b) is canonical. Some readers would initially interpret "John" as the
sentence subject, but they are less likely to miss the clause boundary because the
canonical expectation for a verb is not confirmed by the following word "why."
The following two experiments were designed to explore textual
redundancies involving punctuation and to consider such redundancies from a
developmental psycholinguistic viewpoint.

EXPERIMENT I

Method
Subjects

The sample consisted of 20 fifth graders selected from a rural, middle class,
and predominantly white elementary school in southeast Ohio. All subjects were
identified by their teachers as being above average readers.

Materials

Forty-eight stimulus sentences were created by deriving four types of

structures from each of twelve basic sentences. The four structural types were:
1) punctuated sentences with canonical word order, 2) punctuated sentences
with noncanonical word order, 3) unpunctuated sentences with canonical word
order, and 4) unpunctuated sentences with noncanonical word order. AJ3.C, and
D below are examples.

A. (1. +P+C) Feeling like a fool, Martha left George.

(2. +P—C) Martha left George, feeling like a fool.
(3. —P+C) Feeling like a fool Martha left George
(4. —P—C) Martha left George feeling like a fool

B. (1. +P+C) "He won't help us dig the pit," said Bill.
(2. +P-C) Bill said, "He won't help us dig the pit."
(3. -P+C) He won't help us dig the pit said Bill
(4. -P-C) Bill said He won't help us dig the pit

C. (1. +P+C) John, Mary is going to trip!

(2. +P—C) Mary is going to trip, John!
(3. —p+C) John Mary is going to trip
(4. —P—C) Mary is going to trip John
366 Journal of Reading Behavior X,4

D. (1. +P+C) You are silly!

(2. +P-C) Are you silly!
(3. -P+C) You are silly
(4. —P—C) Are you silly
Of the four structural types derived from each of the twelve basic
sentences, the punctuated canonical (+P+C) version served as the semantic
standard against which comprehension was measured. The correct meaning for
each structural type was defined as the one most likely to be derived from the
+ P + C sentence.
Theoretically, each + P + C sentence contained two major syntactic markers
of interest: 1) a nonconfusing, canonical, word order and 2) a mark of
punctuation which clearly demarcated a major syntactic boundary. In example
B, for instance, the + P + C sentence contains a comma which separates the
speech tag from the main clause; and the speech tag is in sentence final position,
precluding a coreferential interpretation for "Bill" and "He." Thus, the reader
should conclude that someone other than Bill was unwilling to help dig the pit.
In the +P-C sentence, the speech tag precedes the main clause, a word
order condition which might suggest coreference between "Bill" and "He"
except for the presence of the comma which countermands such an interpre-
tation. Again the logical interpretation is that the restive pit-digger is not Bill.
The -P+C sentence does not contain a comma to mark the syntactic break
between the main clause and the speech tag; however, the speech tag follows the
main clause, blocking the coreferent interpretation.
Under the -P-C condition the speech tag is in sentence initial position, and
there is no punctuation to mark the boundary between the tag and the main
clause. In the absence of punctuation and word order cues to the contrary, the
reader's grammatical expectation should operate to transform the main clause
into a complement structure functioning as the direct object of "Bill said." The
major consequence of this transformation should be the logical misinterpretation
that "Bill" and "He" refer to the same person. In response to the question "Who
is unwilling to help dig the pit. Bill or someone else?" the -P-C condition should
force the reader to conclude that "Bill" is the correct answer.
Similar explanations exist for each of the remaining eleven basic sentences
and their derived forms.
From the 48 stimulus sentences, four 12-item tests were constructed.
Stimulus sentences were assigned to each of the four forms in such a way that
each form contained all 12 basic sentences and three each of the four structural
types.

Procedure
Test forms were randomly assigned to the 20 subjects so that each test form
Baldwin, Coady 367

was used five times. In this fashion, each subject read sentences under the four
conditions involving punctuation and word order, and each subject read each of
the twelve basic sentences once.
All sentences were typed on 5x8 note cards and were presented to subjects
in random order to control for presentation effects. Subjects were presented
with the individual sentences and were requested to read them. Multiple choice
questions designed to test sentence comprehension were administered after
each sentence was read. Questions were identical for each of the four
conditions.
The dependent measure in the experiment was comprehension, as measured
by the multiple choice questions. Subjects' scores were based on the number of
correct responses.
Comprehension scores were analyzed in a treatments X treatments X
subjects repeated measures design (Bruning and Kintz, 1968). Main effects in the
two by two ANOVA design were punctuation and canonical word order.

Results and Discussion

Subjects reading canonical sentences had significantly higher sentence

comprehension (X = 2.32^SD = .91) than subjects reading the same sentences
but in noncanonical form (X = .72, SD = .68), F(l,19) = 124.88, p < .001. There
were no statistically significant effects involving punctuation, and there was no
interaction.
The results of experiment I indicate that the absence of word order cues
marking major syntactic boundaries effectively blocked the derivation of
appropriate sentence meanings. In fact, subjects reading noncanonical
sentences, both punctuated and unpunctuated, answered only 24% of the
multiple choice comprehension questions correctly. This implies that subjects

Table 1
Means and Standard Deviations for the Sentence Comprehension Test
Word Order
Canonical Noncanonicali Overall Mean

Cell I n
Punctuated Mean 2.40 .80 1.60
SD .75 .62
Cell in IV
Unpunctuated Mean 2.25 .65 1.45
SD 1.07 .75
Overall Mean 2.32 .72
368 Journal of Reading Behavior X,4

Table 2
Summary Table for the 2X2 ANOVA
Source SS df MS F P

Total 101.95 79
Subjects 14.95 19
iCanonical 51.2 1 51.2 124.88 .001
iPunctuation .45 1 .45 .74 NS
Interaction .00 1 .00 .00 NS
Error -t Canonical 7.8 19 .41
Error jtPunctuation 11.55 19 .61
Error Interaction 16.00 19 .84

reading the noncanonical sentences were systematically selecting the wrong

answer, given that there was a grand total of 26 possible answers for the 12 item
test. By contrast, subjects reading canonical sentences answered 78% of the
comprehension questions correctly. These results suggest that children tend to
ignore punctuation while using word order as a primary source of syntactic
information.

EXPERIMENT H

The second experiment was identical to the first with the single exception
that 20 linguistics graduate students in a large midwest university served as
subjects.

Results

Subjects reading canonical sentences had significantly higher sentence

comprehension (X = 2.58, SD = .56) than subjects reading the same sentences
but in noncanonical form (X = 1.58, SD = .78), F(l,19 = 40, p < .001.
Comprehension was also significantly higher for punctuated sentences (X =
2.34, SD = .76) than for unpunctuated sentences (X = 1.73, SD = .57), F(1.19)
= 32.67, p< .001. In addition, the interaction was statistically significant F(l,19)
= 10.74, p<.005.
Superficially, the results of Experiment II indicated that both canonical
word order and punctuation had a profound effect upon the ability of the
subjects to comprehend the stimulus sentences. However, it seemed possible that
in this case the main effects were the spurious consequence of a strong ordinal
interaction (Figure 1). According to Lubin (1961, p.815), "For an ordinal
interaction it is impossible for the main effects to be insignificant." and, "a
significant interaction implies that the significance of main effects may be
meaningless" (p.816). To investigate this possibility, a posteriori comparisons of
Baldwin, Coady 369

Table 3
Means and Standard Deviations for the
Sentence Comprehension Test
Word Order Overall
Canonical Noncanonical Mean

Cell I II
Punctuated Mean 2.6 2.25 • 2.42
SD .6 .92
Cell in IV
Unpunctuated Mean 2.55 .9 1.72
SD .51 .63
Overall Mean 2.58 1.58

Table 4
Summary Table for the 2X2 ANOVA
Source SS df MS

Total 77.55 79
Subjects 9.05 19
±Canonical 20 1 20 40 .001
± Punctuation 9.8 1 9.8 32.67 .001
Interaction 8.45 1 8.45 10.74 .005
Error -fc Canonical 9.5 19 .5
Error ±Punctuation 5.7 19 .3
Error Interaction 14.95 19 .79

cell means were carried out (Bernstein, 1964). The comparisons indicated that,
sentence comprehension was significantly lower under the -P-C condition than
under each of the other three condition, p < .01. Among the +P+C, +P-C, and
-P+C conditions, there were no significant differences. Apparently, the main
effects in Experiment II were the consequence of a powerful ordinal interaction.

DISCUSSION

Development of Punctuation as a Cue System

Experiments 1 and 2 suggest striking differences in the extent to which

children and adults utilize punctuation during reading. The interaction plot in
Figure 1 shows that for canonical sentences the presence or absence of
punctuation had no important effect upon comprehension for either age group. In
addition, comprehension was dramatically lower for both groups when
noncanonical sentences were presented without punctuation. However, given
punctuated noncanoncial sentences, the performances of adults and children
370 Journal of Reading Behavior X,4

3.00

2.75 ..

2.50 -

2.25 ..

2.00 ..

1.75 .

1.50 ..

1.25 ..

1.00 ..

.75 -.

.50 .

.25 _.
Punctuated
Unpunctuated
• Adults
• Fifth Graders

Canonical Noncanonical
FIGURE 1. Mean comprehension as a function of word order end punctuation.

were highly dissimilar. The fifth graders comprehended the noncanonical

sentences no better with than without punctuation. In contrast, the adult
subjects comprehended punctuated noncanonical sentences almost as well as
punctuated canonical sentences.
Fifth grade readers appear to ignore (or fail to intuit the purpose of)
punctuation, even when commas, question marks, etc. are syntactically critical.
In fact, the complete absence of a punctuation effect in Experiment 1 causes the
investigators to wonder if punctuation can be considered an active cue system
for ten year olds and, by logical extension, for elementary school children in
general. Adults, on the other hand, appear to be highly proficient in using
punctuation to generate appropriate syntactic readings for individual sentences.
The implication in this is that punctuation, as a cue system in reading, has a
remarkably late onset.

Redundancy Continuum for Punctuation

The results of the present research support the notion that individual marks
Baldwin, Coady 371

of punctuation exert a variable influence upon sentence comprehension.

Moreover, the canonical-noncanonical distinction appears to broadly define the
grammatical conditions under which punctuation cues are redundant or critical
aspects of the visual display. When sentences are noncanonical, punctuation
seems essential in arriving at appropriate syntactic analyses. When sentences
are canonical, punctuation appears merely to reiterate grammatical information
already provided by word order.
It is uncertain at this point that a clear dichotomy exists between punctu-
ation cues, i.e., critical versus redundant. In Experiments I and II, all of the
canonical stimulus sentences were converted into noncanonical sentences by
means of simple nondeletion transformations. For instance,
(canonical) John, Mary is going to trip!
(noncanonical} Mary is going to trip, John!
In addition, each noncanonical sentence generated a predictable and meaningful
reading when the critical punctuation cue was deleted or unobserved. Such
sentences are relatively rare. More often, sentences are semi-noncanonical, that
is, they are sentences in which false syntactic interpretations are contradicted
by violations of selectional restrictions or by word order conditions which follow
some distance to the right of the critical punctuation, (a) and (b) below are
examples.
(a) Ben, can you help me? (word order condition)
(b) Mother, look at me. (selection restriction)
In both cases, the verb following an initial noun serves to falsely confirm the
canonical expectation for a subject-verb pattern. However, in (a), the insertion
of "you" between the auxiliary verb and the main verb (word order condition)
should block the Ben = Subject interpretation. In (b); the verb does not agree
with the subject (selectional restriction), and the missing tense marker on "look"
should prohibit the Mother = Subject interpretation. The commas in (a) and (b)
are, consequently, neither absolutely critical nor absolutely redundant. They are
not critical because there are alternative syntactic cues which inform the reader
that the noun of direct address is not the subject of the main clause. On the other
hand, the commas are not entirely redundant since they may prevent temporary
syntactic miscues.
On first sight, the proposed analysis of semi-noncanonical sentences (a) and
(b) may appear both strained and inconsequential. After all, who would believe
that readers, even children, would misprocess the syntax of sentences with so
many overt grammatical cues?
In an earlier experiment (Coady & Baldwin, 1977) sentences (a) and (b) were
two of thirteen stimulus sentences presented on individual flash cards to 80
children in grades two through five. During on-sight oral reading, 46 of the
children supplied deviant grammatical intonation at the boundary between the
372 Journal of Reading Behavior X,4

noun of direct address and the main clause of both (a) and (b), i.e., there were 92
errors associated with the comma in these two sentences. Following the
generation of deviant pitch + pause patterns, subjects engaged in one of
four behaviors:

1) they regressed to the beginning of the sentence, rereading it

and supplying the appropriate intonation;
2) they regressed to the beginning of the sentence and read it
wrong again;
(3 they continued to read the sentence, apparently creating an
ungrammatical or anomalous string of words; or
(4 they continued to read, modifying the remainder of the sentence
to match the expectation for a subject-verb-object clause, e.g.,
(c)and(d):
(c) Ben can help me.
(d) Mother looks(ed) at me.
Behavior #1 suggests that the punctuation in semi-noncanonical sentences is not
altogether critical since word order conditions or the violation of selections!
restrictions within the sentence may alert the reader to prior misinterpretations.
In contrast, behavior #4 clearly indicates the kind of error which can result from
failure to observe the punctuation of such sentences. Punctuation marks in semi-
noncanonical sentences probably tend to fall somewhere in the middle of the
redundancy continuum.
To this point, only inner-sentence constraints on punctuation have been
discussed. General context will almost certainly prove to be a factor in
determining the critical or redundant character of punctuation marks. The
extent to which semantic biases built up through prior context are sufficiently
powerful to overcome the false grammatical expectations engendered by
noncanonical and semi-noncanonical sentences is an open question, and one
which is beyond the scope of the present discussion.

Punctuation Theory

For purposes of the present discussion, it is assumed that during sentence

processing adult readers generate grammatical expectations, expectations
which are either confirmed or negated as additional sentential information
becomes available. Precisely how readers utilize such expectations is
problematic.
McConkie and Rayner (1976) described two theoretical positions which bear
on the subject of reader expectations. The first, the Hypothesis Position, holds
that during states of fixation the reader is primarily engaged in the task of
confirming or rejecting previously generated hypotheses about the semantic and
Baldwin, Coady 373

syntatic information contained within the fixation. Implicit in the Hypothesis

Position is the notion that grammatical expectations are the products of active
reader strategies.
An alternative theoretical stance is the Direct Perception Position, which
"assumes that the fixation period is spent primarily in determining the nature of
the text within the fixated region, rather than in hypothesizing what is to come"
(p. 155). The Direct Perception Position suggests to us that grammatical
expectations are the stimulus bound consequences of previously acquired
information and ought not to be considered reader "strategies" in any strict
sense.
It is unclear to us whether or not grammatical expectations per se facilitate
reading. However, we do maintain that grammatical expectations can, under
specific circumstances, interfere with sentence processing; and it is this
potential for interference which defines the primary role of punctuation in
reading.
Given the grammatical string W # X such that

X-M{a 2 +b 2 ...N 2 )> , then

<0 )
Rulel:W#X ( a ^ b 1 . . .N 1 )E 1 + E2 # Ua 2 + b 2 . . .N2)>
( 0 )
Where: W is a phrase, clause or sentence.
# is a punctuated phrase, clause, or sentence boundary.
X is anything which follows #.
(a1 + b 1 . . . N1) is a linearly defined set of surface structure grammatical
constituents.
E* is a sentence-type expectation engendered by W, i.e., statement,
question, exclamation.
2
E is a word order expectation caused by W.
(a 2 + b 2 . . .N2) is a linearly defined set of surface structure grammatical
constituents.
0 is the null set of constituents.

Expressed in Rule 1 is the assumption that each clause or sentence W

generates two grammatical expectations: 1) a sentence-type expectation, and 2)
a word order expectation. Rules 2 and 3 predict the syntactic miscues which will
occur due to these expectations if punctuation is ignored in the specified
environments. At the same time, Rules 2 and 3 state the grammatical conditions
374 Journal of Reading Behavior X,4

under which punctuation marks are critical or near critical in resolving the
syntax of pertinent grammatical structures.
Rule 2: If X is 0, and
# is a mark of punctuation which contradicts E1, then
W#X-»WX

Examples:
(a) Ralph is a beachcomber?
(b) Are you a clown!

Rule 3: If N 1 and a 2 represent major grammatical categories, e.g.,

noun, verb, adjective; and
N 1 and a 2 can, by rules of English syntax, occur as immediate
constituents within a clause, then:

Examples:
(a) If you can, help Ozymandias understand statistics.
(b) This is my favorite breakfast, cereal, toast, and coffee.
(c) John, is that you?
(d) The monkeys are fighting. The zookeeper doesn't look happy
about that.

Rules 2 and 3 are abstract statements which delineate the grammatical

conditions under which punctuation marks are hypothesized to be high utility
graphic cues. It is quite possible that there are more than two rules or that the
rules will prove to be false generalizations. In any event, the rules are explicit;
and, as such, their predictions are subject to disconfirmation by direct
experiment.
The results of Experiments I and II are offered as supporting evidence for
the validity of Rules 2 and 3. All of the noncanonical stimulus sentences
(±. P -C) conformed to the grammatical conditions of one of the two rules under
discussion. In both experiments, the absence of punctuation under these
conditions resulted in predictable and dramatic changes in sentence
comprehension; and nearly identical results obtained when the fifth graders
attempted to read punctuated noncanonical sentences. In contrast, none of the
[± P + C) stimulus sentences conformed to the conditions of Rule 2 or 3, and
comprehension was predictably high for both adults and children.
It seems likely that the major function of punctuation is to serve as a system
of visual markers which contradict previously generated false grammatical
expectations. This portends that the rules of English punctuation established in
conjunction with traditional grammar are empty conventions which neither
Baldwin, Coady 375

predict nor explain reading behaviors involving punctuation. For example, both
(a) and (b) contain nouns of direct address; and as such, they are punctuated
identically.
(a) Jim, I think that on the count of three we should all burp.
(b) I think that on the count of three we should all burp, Jim.
The canonical-noncanonical construct predicts that the comma is critical only in
(b), because of (b}'s noncanonical word order. At present, this phenomenon can
only be explained with reference to grammatical expectations. Neither
traditional nor transformational grammars offer a suitable explanation for the
variable importance of individual marks of punctuation.

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