A produção e a percepção prosódica dos sinais de pontuação na leitura e compreensão do texto

Abstract

This work aimed to investigate the production and the perception of punctuation marks in reading aloud and its influence on the comprehension of texts. This research considers relevant Cagliari’s Hypothesis (1989), which predicts that punctuation marks are graphical prosodic markers of writing that facilitates the comprehension of texts; the Prosodic Phonology Theory (NESPOR & VOGEL, 1986/2007), which claims that we have a prosodic mental organization of speech; and Janet Fodor’s (2002) Hypothesis of Implicit Prosody, which predicts that an implicit prosody of the organization of speech projects into reading. The general objectives were to investigate: (i) if the absence of graphic marks influences the reading aloud and the comprehension of the text; (ii) if during the listening of a recorded text, the participant notices the melodic variations of the stimulus and correlates them with the conventional graphic markings of punctuation; (iii) if there is a relation between the perceived prosodic organization during listening, the marked prosodic organization in writing and the understanding of the text. This research was guided by the following hypotheses: (i) there is an implicit prosody of speech projected into reading, guiding the segmentation and organization of prosodic and syntactic constituents, facilitating linguistic processing and text comprehension (in this sense, even though there is no graphic mark, if a pause is needed, for example, it will be produced orally, since we mentally represent the speech in prosodic constituents and this representation is projected into reading and guides the processing); (ii) the prosodic perception of punctuation marks occurs more efficiently if the reading is more concatenated, that is, less fragmented by hesitation pauses, which facilitates the processing of the text. In order to achieve the aim of the research, reading (production) and comprehension experiments and listening (perception) and comprehension experiments were conducted. For production and comprehension experiments, the participants were High School students and two teachers, both had a licentiate degree in Portuguese (each teacher served as a reading parameter for a group). As we aimed to investigate the influence of presence/absence of punctuation marks in reading and comprehension, participants were divided into two groups: Presence of Punctuation (PP) and Absence of Punctuation (AP). The participants in PP group read a text with the original punctuation marks preserved in the recording, and the participants in AP group read the same text, however, presented without punctuation marks, with all the words without differentiation between uppercase and lowercase letters. Participants in AP groups should punctuate the text and then read it aloud for recording. After reading, participants from both groups answered lexical and inferential comprehension questions. In perception experiments, the participants were undergraduate students. They were divided into 4 groups, they heard 4 different recordings of the readings performed in the previous production task, according to the stimulus text with or without punctuation (PP or AP) and according to the speed of reading (fast reading and slow reading). The results of this research suggest that: a) the presence of graphic punctuation marks that incite melodic variations during reading aloud facilitates understanding; b) the readers, using their internalized linguistic knowledge, recognize the end of a prosodic, syntactic, semantic and discursive unit, and represent a boundary orally, through pauses and/or assignment of boundary tones L% or H%, however, oftentimes, they do not know how to correlate these boundaries with punctuation marks; c) faster reading (less fragmented by pauses) facilitates reading fluency and comprehension; d) there are students finishing High School and the undergraduate course without having proper grammar knowledge of the uses of punctuation marks; e)

the more experienced reader does not make any correlation between melodic variations or pauses and punctuation marks, they only do those correlations that are really important for the prosodic, syntactic and semantic organization of the text; f) the L% boundaries, which generally correspond to the dot markings, being more robust, are more perceived (93%), whereas the H% boundaries, which usually correspond to the commas, because they are less robust, are less perceived and marked (45%); g) apprentices' failure to use punctuation marks may be related to the form or even the lack of approach to the content.