1. English Grammar II
Barrau, Natasha
Camargo, Víctor
Martins, Sofía
“Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in discourse is
dependent on that of another. The one presupposes the other, in the sense that
it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it. When this happens, a
relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the
presupposed, are thereby at least potentially integrated into a text” (Halliday
and Hasan 1976: 4: their emphasis)
Cohesion is the way the elements within a text join together as a unified
whole. It is the internal organization of a text. A text needs sequential
implicativeness to be cohesive; that is to say that each part of the text creates
the context within which the next bit of the text is interpreted.
Cohesive resources:
We, language users, can recover the links between the parts of a text
thanks to the resources of cohesion. They are the elements that the
writer/speaker makes use of to create cohesion.
Reference:
It refers to how the writer/speaker introduces participants and topics and
keeps track of them in a text.
Example:
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.
He was gilded…
The presupposing item He makes reference to the previously mentioned
presupposed item the Happy Prince. This type of reference is called
ANAPHORIC.
Moreover, the statue is referring to the Happy Prince, which was mentioned
immediately after, constituting a case of ESPHORIC reference.
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2. English Grammar II
Barrau, Natasha
Camargo, Víctor
Martins, Sofía
Lexical cohesion:
It is related to the way the writer/speaker uses lexical items (nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs) en event sequences ( chains of clauses and sentences) to
relate the text consistently to its area of focus or its field. Successive sentences are
likely to refer to previously mention sentences and to other concepts present in the
text.
Conjunctive cohesion:
It makes reference to how the writer creates and expresses logical
relationships between the parts of a text. We can fully interpret the meaning of a
sentence by reading it as standing in a contrastive logical relation with a previous
one. English possesses a large inventory of connectors which link clauses in
discourse.
Ellipsis:
It is the omission of a clause, or some part of a clause or group, in contexts
where it can be assumed. After a more specific mention, words are omitted when
the phrase needs to be repeated.
Example:
“Swallow, swallow, little swallow,” said the prince, “ Will you not stay
with me one night longer?”
“It is winter,” answered the swallow.
It is a case of ellipsis because the swallow could have answered: “No, I will
not stay with you one night longer. It is winter.” The first part of the sentence is
omitted in the swallow’s answer.
Substitution:
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3. English Grammar II
Barrau, Natasha
Camargo, Víctor
Martins, Sofía
English and other languages have a set of place holders which can be used to
signal an omission- so and not for clauses; do for verbal groups and one for
nominal groups. A word is not omitted but substituted.
Example:
My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if
pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died.
In this case so is replacing the idea of being happy.
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