Punctuation and the ‘Well-formed Sentence’ in the afterlife of the King James Bible

McCumber, Vanessa Marie (2014) Punctuation and the ‘Well-formed Sentence’ in the afterlife of the King James Bible. MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This study analyses the clause-based punctuation practices of four selected passages in the King James Bible, comparing the practices over time and correlating them to changes in the sentence structure of the text. The purpose is to examine what, if any, characteristics of the sentence can be revealed by the study of punctuation, and to use these findings to question the utility of the ‘well-formed sentence’ as the organisational unit of historical syntactic analysis. The results are encouraging of the continued exploration of punctuation as a source of evidence and support current theories that suggest that texts are organised not only according to grammatical structure, but also by rhetorical and semantic structure.

• Item Type: Thesis (MPhil(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: English language, punctuation, syntax, textual afterlives, historical linguistics, King James Bible
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics; P Language and Literature > PE English
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Supervisor's Name: Smith, Professor Jeremy J.
• Date of Award: 2014
• Depositing User: Ms Vanessa M McCumber
• Unique ID: glathesis:2014-5460
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 04 Sep 2014 08:23
• Last Modified: 04 Sep 2014 08:39
• URI: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/5460