Colon (rhetoric)

Colon, plural: Kola ( ancient Greek κῶλον colon " link" ) is called the elementary rhythmic unit of one or more words in speech ( prose ) or verse

By caesura (slight pauses in breathing or significant cuts in speaking ) the Kola are formed and form an articulating speaking clock. In the unbound speech, the period is divided by Kola. Within a colon can divide up commas smallest, non-independent speech clocks. Thus stands the colon between the parent and the period entirely dependent, separated by commas members.

Kola in rhetoric and prosody

After teaching the ancient rhetoric a colon comprises seven to sixteen syllables.

In the prosody units (usually with a main building and several side elevations ) made ​​up to six Versfüßen by Kola. Length or brevity of the individual Kola caused the momentum flux or reprint the verse. Colon forms the dominant constantly recur in speech ( prose ) or verse are called rhythmic leitmotif.

Kolonlängen

In the quantitative linguistics as well as in the quantitative stylistics was examined whether the frequency, occurring at the Kola different lengths in texts can prove the following as a language law. Corresponding data to Marmontel, Rousseau and Voltaire provides Knauer, the term " rhythmic group " ready. For two text excerpts of Marmontel a lawful distribution of Kolonlängen could be proven as well as for the other two authors.

At the Kolonlängen in the first two chapters of Pushkin's " Queen of Spades ", the shifted negative hypergeometric distribution can be adjusted:

Where x: number of syllables per colon, n ( x) is the observed number of Kola with x syllables (absolute values ​​); NP (x ) the number of syllables Kola x calculated when one adjusts the shifted negative hypergeometric distribution of the observed data. Result: the shifted negative hypergeometric distribution with C = 0.0156 is a good model for the observed relationships. (C is regarded as acceptable if C ≤ 0:02. )