> <snip>
> Crudely, to give you something to shoot down, would it be fair to say that
> MS pointing reflects the spoken word, tends to mark larger or smaller
> blocks
> of text, and thus, with the appearance of linear layout in early printed
> texts, actually leads in the first instance to a *reduction of what we
> would
> now think of as "punctuation"?
> <snip>
>
> Lineation appears before incunabula.
Yeah, I should have been more careful with what I was saying. Lineation as
a reflex of the introduction of rhyming forms from the continent, circa,
"The Owl and the Nightinagle," so already present in the MSS.
> That aside, the idea that punctuation
> actually reduced to begin with as spatial notation took hold was rather
> where I was heading.
I like that way of putting it, as it makes what happens with Wyatt make
sense. But myself, I'm working-up a theory based on a *very restricted
range of texts, not simply between about 1520-1560, but wildly selective
even in that time period. So I should also issue a health warning around my
own tendency to generalise from an inadequate base.
Robin
> But with this major health warning: I _really_ don't
> know enough to comment evidentially.
>
> CW
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