Punctuation
‘Punctuation’ refers to various systems of dots (Latin punctus) and other marks that accompany letters and other glyphs as part of a writing system. Although there is a certain overlap among the various kinds of marking, punctuation proper should be distinguished from diacritic marks, which are intended as modifications of individual letters (e.g., ö ő í è ç šū ñ ) and are often simply considered to be part of the letter they appear on, like the dot on the Latin lower case i or the ear on Vietnamese
John M Lawler is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Universtiy of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was director of the undergraduate linguistics program from the mid-1980s to 2001; he also teaches in the Residential College at Michigan, and at Western Washington University in Bellingham. After a B.A. in mathematics and German, an M.A. thesis on applications of computers to linguistic field methods, and several years of teaching English as a foreign language, he received his Ph.D. in 1973 under George Lakoff and Robin T Lakoff. His dissertation, Studies in English Generics, founded the modern study of the semantics of nominal reference to kinds, and of nomic and habitual verb reference. A generalist by inclination, he has published on a broad spectrum of linguistic topics, including second-language learning, lexical semantics, negation, metaphor, Unix, sound symbolism, Acehnese syntax, logic and mathematics, computational linguistics, cognitive grammar, and popular English usage.