The Role of Punctuation in Syntactic Partition and Convergence

Syntactic partition and convergence are the characteristics peculiar to non-classical paradigm texts which manifest themselves in excessive fragmentary nature of the utterence or blurring the boundaries between separate syntactic units correspondingly. These phenomena occur not only through special transformations of neutral syntactic structures (gaps, reordering, etc.), but also due to specifi c punctuation arrangements. The article points out that syntactic transformations
and punctuation arrangement in utterances, featuring the examples of partition and convergence, are relatively autonomous aspects of non-classical writing. There are three forms of correlations among these aspects. Firstly, partition can be
achieved through syntactic transformations without being punctuationally arranged (some forms of ellipsis). Secondly, partition, achieved through transformation of the syntactic structure, can be marked punctuationally (specifi c forms of
ellipsis, parenthetical constructions, not agreeing grammatically with the enclosing sentence). Finally, thirdly, syntactic partition and convergence can be formed only by punctuation means without syntactic transformations (parenthetical
constructions, agreeing grammatically with the enclosing sentence, detachment, lack of punctuation arrangement, consecutive use of ‘weak’ punctuation marks).