Punctuation
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1. Overview
Maþal employs a punctuation system that is visually distinct from Latin punctuation but functionally comparable in many respects. The system marks sentence boundaries, clause boundaries, and certain internal morphological boundaries.
2. Core Punctuation
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘The fox exists. ’
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘¿Does the sun shine?’
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘¡Let's go!’
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘everyone, several, nothing’
3. Morphological Boundary Markers
There are special signs which indicate boundaries within verbal and nominal complexes.
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘a'benem (I am)’
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘ym ska-búna (to do magic)’
Word count mismatch between sentence and gloss line
‘au:møntiþ maþer ym lýna Bruineng. (Now the sun is shining.)’
Because these punctuation marks serve both syntactic and morphological functions, they are part of the formal grammatical presentation of written Maþal, not merely typographic ornament.
4. Capitalization
Capitalization in Maþal follows grammatical rather than purely positional rules.
Only nominative-case nouns and proper nouns are capitalized.
Sentence-initial words are not capitalized unless they belong to one of those categories.