1, question mark.
Both Chinese and English question marks are placed at the end of interrogative sentences to express doubt. If the interrogative mood of Chinese written language does not contain interrogative words, interrogative modal particles or special sentence patterns (such as "can't" and "can't go"), it can only be expressed by question marks. If you remove the question mark, you can't judge the tone of the sentence. Is he the teacher that Li You often talks about?
On the other hand, English is different. Its interrogative mood can be expressed not only by question marks, but also by word order, that is, putting auxiliary verbs and modal verbs in front of the subject to form interrogative sentences. At this point, even if the question mark is removed, we know that the tone of the sentence is a question. Did you buy a book about the Olympic Games yesterday?
However, in spoken English, sometimes interrogative mood is directly expressed by the word order of declarative sentences. At this time, if you write down the sentence, you must use question marks to understand the meaning of the sentence. For example:
Where were you just now?
I went to the cinema.
You didn't visit your grandmother?
2. Comma.
Commas in Chinese are mainly used for: the pause between the subject and the predicate in a sentence; A pause between verbs and objects in a sentence; A pause after an adverbial in a sentence; Pauses between clauses in complex sentences (except semicolons), etc.
Commas are mainly used to separate appositives in English; Separate independent components; Used after an interjection; Independent adverbials expressed by participle phrases or compound structures; Adverbial clause (or its omitted form) placed at the beginning of a sentence or in a sentence; Other adverbials are placed at the beginning of the sentence or inserted in the sentence; Separate non-restrictive attributive clauses; Connect the parallel elements in the sentence; Indicate the date and address, etc.
The usage of English comma is very complicated and frequently used. This should be regarded as a major feature of English punctuation. English commas not only play a pause role in sentences, but also have grammatical functions. With its help, some elements can be placed at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence without affecting the expression of the meaning of the sentence.
Chinese punctuation does not have this function. For example, in the sentence "When I asked her, her reaction was to shake her head." The adverbial clause "when I asked her" used two commas in the sentence, but when translated into Chinese, the adverbial clause can only be said first, and then the main sentence: "when I asked her, she shook her head, which was the answer."
In addition, because English punctuation is not as much as Chinese, it is impossible to find one-to-one punctuation in Chinese-English translation. Then use other punctuation marks in English instead. For example, pause is unique to Chinese, so it should be replaced by comma when translated into English; On the other hand, commas connecting words or phrases in English should also be regarded as pauses when translated into Chinese.
3. Semicolon.
Both Chinese and English semicolons indicate pauses shorter than periods and longer than commas. Wu Bangju believes that the main function of semicolon is to distinguish the internal levels of long multi-level complex sentences. This is for Chinese, because Chinese parataxis organizes the language through the logical relationship within the sentence, and to keep the logic of the sentence clear, we should pay attention to the order of words, the time order and logical order of events and the correct use of punctuation marks.
Once the internal structure of a sentence is complex and there is no grammatical means to connect it, punctuation becomes very important. People's Republic of China (PRC) national standard (1995) "Usage of punctuation marks" stipulates that the use scope of semicolons is: pause between juxtaposed clauses in complex sentences, use semicolons; For multiple compound sentences with non-coordinate relationship (such as turning relationship, causal relationship, etc.). ), with semicolons between the front and back parts of the first layer; Semicolons can also be used between items listed in a branch.