FORMAL AND CONTEXTUAL LINKS LINKS

 We can describe the two ways of approaching language as “ contextual “,

referring to facts outside language, and “ formal “, referring to facts inside
language.
 Formal links between sentences and between clauses are know as “
Cohesive Devices “.

COHESION IN ENGLISH
 Reference Personal

Demonstrative

Comparative

 Subtitution and Ellipsis Nominal

Verbal

Clausal

 Conjunction Adversative

Additive

Temporal

Causal

 Lexical Cohesion Reiteration

Collocation
PERSONAL REFERENCE
 Personal reference items, are expressed through pronouns and
determiners. They serve to identify individuals and objects that are named
at some other point in the text.

Example: Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t have to change the world. He could

have chosen to rule much as his predecessors did .

DEMONSTRATIVE REFERENCE
 Demonstrative reference is expressed through determiners and adverbs.
These items can represent a single word or phrase, or much longer chunks
of text – ranging across several paragraph s or even several pages.

Example: Recognizing that his country had to change, Gorbachev could

have become a cautious modernizer in the Chinese fashion, promoting
economic reform and sponsoring new technology while holding firm
against political change. This did not happen.

COMPARATIVE REFERENCE
 Comparative reference is expressed through adjectives and adverbs and
serves to compare items within a text in terms of identity or similarity.

Example:

A:Would you like these seats?

B: No, as a matter of fact, I’d like the other seats.

Substitution
There are three types of substitution –

 nominal,
 verbal
 causal.

Examples of each type follow.

 NOMINAL SUBSTITUTION: There are some new tennis balls in the bag.
These ones ’ve lost their bounce.
 VERBAL SUBSTITUTION
A: Annie says you drink too much.
B: So do you!
 CLAUSAL SUBSTITUTION
Is it going to rain?

Ellipsis
Ellipsis occurs when some essential structural element is omitted from
a sentence or clause and can only be recovered by referring to an
element in the predicting text. As with substitution,

there are three types of ellipsis –

a)nominal,

b)verbal

c)clausal.

Examples of each type follow.

  NOMINAL ELLIPSIS: My kids play an awful lot of sport both ( ) are
incredibly energetic.
 VERBAL ELLIPSIS

A: Have you been working?

B: Yes ,I have ( ).

 CLAUSAL ELLIPSIS
A: Why’d you only set three places? Paul’s staying for dinner, isn’t
he?

B: Is he? He didn’t tell me ( ).

CONJUNCTION:
Conjunction differs from reference, substitution and ellipsis in that it is
not a device for reminding the reader of previously mentioned entities,
actions and states of affairs.

There are four different types of conjunction –

a) temporality,
b) causality,
c) addition
d) adversity.
Examples of each type follow.
  ADVERSATIVE: I’m afraid I’ll be home late tonight. However, I
won’t have to go in until late to .
morrow

 ADDITIVE : From a marketing view point, the popular tabloid

encourages the reader to read the whole page instead of choosing
stories. And isn’t that what any publisher wants?
 TEMPORAL: Brick tea is a blend that has been compressed into
a cake. It is taken mainly by the minority groups in China. First, it is
ground to a dust. Then it is usually cooked in milk.
 CLAUSAL: Chinese tea is becoming increasingly popular in
restaurant, and even in coffee shops. This is because of the
growing belief that is has several health-giving properties.

LEXICAL COHESION
Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a text are semantically
related in some way – in other words, they are related in terms of their
meaning.

The two major categories of Lexical Cohesion are :

 Reiteration
Repetition

Synonym

Superordinate

General Word
  Collocation

REITERATION
Reiteration includes repetition, synonym or near synonym,
super-ordinate, and general word.
Examples of each type follow.
 REPETITION: What we lack in a newspaper is what we
should get. In a word, a ‘popular’ newspaper may be the
winning ticket.
 SYNONYM: You could try reversing the car up the slope.
The incline isn’t all that steep.
 SUPERORDINATE: Pneumonia has arrived with the cold
and wet conditions. The illness is striking everyone from
infants to the elderly.
 GENERAL WORD
A : Did you try the steamed buns?
B : Yes, I didn’t like the things much.

COLLOCATION
Collocation can cause major problems for discourse analysis because it
includes all those items in a text that are semantically related. In some
cases this makes it difficult to decide for certain whether a cohesive
relationship exists or not. Most linguists who have written about
cohesion admit that lexical collocation is a problem, and some refuse to
deal with it because of this. The problems arise because collocation is
expressed through open rather than closed class items. In contrast,
there is no limit to the items that can be used to express collocation.
This means that it is difficult to establish sets of regularly co-occurring
words and phrases.
An additional problem is the fact that many lexical relationships are text- as well
as context-bound. This means that words and phrases that are related in one text
may not be related in another. For example, the words neighbour and scoundrel
are not related at all. However, in the following text they are synonyms.

Example : My neighbour has just let one of his trees fall my garden. And the
scoundrel refuses to pay for the damage he has caused.

The End….