La valutazione della punteggiatura nelle certificazioni linguistiche

In normative linguistics, punctuation is a collection of non–alphabetic signs that allow the analysis of a written text and the identification of its syntactical–semantic units. Punctuation has a segmental and syntactical–semantic role, but it also has intonational and emotional functions. Indeed, it defines the right intonation given to any kind of sentence. Frequently, these aspects of punctuation are not taken into account in the assessment of language proficiency. In this respect, the marginal assessment of punctuation in a corpus of international standardised tests of Italian–l2 proficiency will be described. Overlooking punctuation has consequences on learning a second language, mainly as far as the relations among both spoken and written language and emotional–intonational aspects because the use of prosody, especially intonation, implies the transfer of specific information in Italian language.