The cognitive complexity of punctuation

A long-standing scientific debate has focused on the prosodic versus grammatical function of punctuation marks. In this paper, I claim that such an approach is by itself insufficient to explain the complexities of punctuation: no matter how hard we try to systematically connect punctuation with intonation, pauses and syntactic boundaries, exceptions will always turn out in usage that force us to find specific explanations in specific contexts. As an alternative, the paper explores the hypothesis that punctuation is a complex system of signs which contribute to the economy of text interpretability, indicating points in the text where cognitive processes may operate to construct a pattern which enables its interpretation in an efficient, efficacious and appropriate manner.