Stanislav O. Functional characterics of non-alphabetic signs in the French language.

The dissertation focuses on the functional possibilities of non-alphabetic signs in the French language. The paper contains the classification of these units and their functional description. It has been found out that the inventory of non-alphabetic signs of the French orthography consists of 18 units, which differ in their graphical picture and position. Non-alphabetic signs of the French written language take part in letter-writing (diacritical signs), words (hyphen, apostrophe, interval) and the space between words (punctuation signs, indention, margin). The analysis proved that though the investigated units do not have direct phonetic correlate, they correspond with oral language and they function on different levels of the language structure: graphic, orthographic, lexical, syntactical. The functional analysis demonstrated that non-alphabetic signs of the French orthography are polyfunctional graphical units which perform such main functions: phonographic, graphically marked, content discerning,pragmatic.