COHERENCE & COHESION

In Summary

Connect ideas, sentences and paragraphs using a variety of cohesive devices:

logical bridges (parallel construction)

carry the same idea of a topic over from sentence to sentence, i.e. successive sentences are constructed
in parallel form

e.g. In the first stage, an idea can be generated by using a mind-map and some discussion. In the next
stage, a clear plan of action can be produced in the form of a list.

verbal bridges (back referencing/linking words)

key words/phrases might be repeated in a number of sentences, or synonyms utilised instead to avoid
exact repetition.

e.g. There are three stages to the pre-writing process: one to effect the generation of ideas, another to
facilitate an action plan, and the third to research the information to be included in your text. In the
first stage, an idea can be generated by using a mind-map and some discussion.

words/phrases to link ideas between sentences for smooth transition

e.g. writing is a process, which can take a long time and involve many obstacles. However, when you are
finished, you’ll see that it was worth the effort.

Coherence and cohesion are essential for aiding readability and idea communication. Coherence is
about the unity of the ideas and cohesion the unity of structural elements. One way to do this is
through the use of cohesive devices: logical bridges (repetition), verbal bridges (synonyms), linking
words, and clear back referencing. If these types of devices are missing in the text, it not only becomes
more difficult to read the text, but also to understand its contents since the reader must guess how the
various parts of the paragraph or text are connected, which will involve re-reading sentences or larger
sections more than once.
With logical bridges, the same idea of a topic is carried over (repeated) from sentence to sentence, and
successive sentences can be constructed in parallel form. With verbal bridges, key words or synonymous
words can be repeated, pronouns can replace nouns and transition words (as shown below) can be
used. In the paragraph below, words and phrases that serve to increase the coherence of the
paragraph are highlight and underlined. As this sample paragraph indicates, coherence and cohesion in a
paragraph is established by combining more than one device.

Example Remarks

There are three components to a typical modern catalytic converter: one to effect the reduction of
nitrogen oxides, another to facilitate the oxidation of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, and the third
to maintain the correct abundance of oxygen. In the first stage the nitrogen oxides are reduced using a
platinum catalyst, which facilitates their decomposition into nitrogen and oxygen. In the next stage the
carbon fragments are oxidized over a platinum/rhodium catalyst. Finally, the correct amount of oxygen
is ensured by monitoring the amount of oxygen passing into the engine, and by incorporating into the
catalyst a metal oxide that absorbs oxygen (by reacting with it to form a higher oxide) when the fuel
mixture has too much oxygen and reverts to the lower oxide, releasing oxygen, when the mixture has
too little (Atkins. P.W, 1991)

The topic sentence introduces the three stages which are then explained in more detail.

Verbal bridge: The second sentence includes a key word “reduced”, linking the idea to the previous
sentence though in a different form from earlier (“reduction”). A similar repetition occurs in the third
sentence.

Logical bridge: The processes of the first two stages are described in parallel form.

The final sentence sums up this process, clearly signalled by “finally”.

A more direct way of emphasizing the inherent logic of a paragraph is through the use of linking words
and phrases which mark transitions within and between sentences. The table below gives a sample of
such linking words and groups them based on the connection they illustrate/indicate.Aphasia is a
condition that affects your ability to communicate. It can affect your speech, as well as the way you
write and understand both spoken and written language. Aphasia typically occurs suddenly after a
stroke or a head injury.Stages of Language Acquisition

There are four main stages of normal language acquisition: The babbling stage, the Holophrastic or one-
word stage, the two-word stage and the Telegraphic stage. These stages can be broken down even more
into these smaller stages: pre-production, early production, speech emergent, beginning fluency
intermediate fluency and advanced fluency. On this page I will be providing a summary of the four major
stage of language acquisition.

Babbling

Within a few weeks of being born the baby begins to recognize it’s mothers’ voice. There are two sub-
stages within this period. The first occurs between birth – 8 months. Most of this stage involves the baby
relating to its surroundings and only during 5/6 – 8 month period does the baby begin using it’s vocals.
As has been previously discussed babies learn by imitation and the babbling stage is just that. During
these months the baby hears sounds around them and tries to reproduce them, albeit with limited
success. The babies attempts at creating and experimenting with sounds is what we call babbling. When
the baby has been babbling for a few months it begins to relate the words or sounds it is making to
objects or things. This is the second sub-stage. From 8 months to 12 months the baby gains more and
more control over not only it’s vocal communication but physical communication as well, for example
body language and gesturing. Eventually when the baby uses both verbal and non-verbal means to
communicate, only then does it move on to the next stage of language acquisition.

Holophrastic / One-word stage

The second stage of language acquisition is the holophrastic or one word stage. This stage is
characterized by one word sentences. In this stage nouns make up around 50% of the infants vocabulary
while verbs and modifiers make up around 30% and questions and negatives make up the rest. This one-
word stage contains single word utterances such as “play” for “I want to play now”. Infants use these
sentence primarily to obtain things they want or need, but sometimes they aren’t that obvious. For
example a baby may cry or say “mama” when it purely wants attention. The infant is ready to advance
to the next stage when it can speak in successive one word sentences.

wordstages
Two-Word Stage

The two word stage (as you may have guessed) is made of up primarily two word sentences. These
sentences contain 1 word for the predicate and 1 word for the subject. For example “Doggie walk” for
the sentence “The dog is being walked.” During this stage we see the appearance of single modifiers
e.g. “That dog”, two word questions e.g. “Mummy eat?” and the addition of the suffix –ing onto words
to describe something that is currently happening e.g. “Baby Sleeping.”

Telegraphic Stage

The final stage of language acquisition is the telegraphic stage. This stage is named as it is because it is
similar to what is seen in a telegram; containing just enough information for the sentence to make
sense. This stage contains many three and four word sentences. Sometime during this stage the child
begins to see the links between words and objects and therefore overgeneralization comes in. Some
examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage are “Mummy eat carrot”, “What her name?” and “He is
playing ball.” During this stage a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000 words. At the
end of this stage the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words and attempts to get a grip on
tenses.

la

As a child’s grasp on language grows it may seem to us as though they just learn each part in a random
order, but this is not the case. There is a definite order of speech sounds. Children first start speaking
vowels, starting with the rounded mouthed sounds like “oo” and “aa”. After the vowels come the
consonants, p, b, m, t, d, n, k and g. The consonants are first because they are easier to pronounce then
some of the others, for example ‘s’ and ‘z’ require specific tongue place which children cannot do at that
age.

As all human beings do, children will improvise something they cannot yet do. For example when
children come across a sound they cannot produce they replace it with a sound they can e.g. ‘Thoap” for
“Soap” and “Wun” for “Run.” These are just a few example of resourceful children are, even if in our
eyes it is just cute.

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English

Pragmatics

Deixis

Deixis

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Deixis derives from Ancient Greek - δεῖξις (deîxis, “pointing, indicating, reference”) and δείκνυμι
(deíknumi, “I show”) and forms an important part of linguistics and pragmatics, serving to interpret
speech in context.

What is Deixis?

Deixis refers to a word or phrase that shows the time, place or situation a speaker is in when talking.

Also known as deictic expressions (or deictics), they typically include pronouns and adverbs such as 'I',
'you', 'here', 'there', and tend to be used mostly where the context is known to both the speaker and the
person spoken to.

Deixis Examples

"I wish you'd been here yesterday."

In this sentence the words 'I,' 'you', 'here', and 'yesterday' all function as deixis - they reference a
speaker and an addressee, a location and a time. As we are outside of the context, we cannot know who
'I' is, where 'here' is, nor can we be entirely sure when 'yesterday' was; this information is known to the
speaker instead and is therefore termed 'deictic'.

"Last week I flew over there for a quick visit."

In this sentence, 'last week', 'I' and 'there' are the deixis - referencing time, speaker and place.

We do not have enough context to completely understand the whole sentence, whereas the speaker
and the addressee do; they don't need to repeat or state the precise context. Instead, they use words
and phrases that refer to people, time and place and these function deictically.

Let's examine another sentence taken out of context:

'If you come over here I can show you where it happened, all that time ago.'

What questions do you find yourself asking as you look at the sentence?

Deixis a conversation without context StudySmarter

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Without context, we cannot completely understand a sentence that relies on Deixis JW - StudySmarter
Originals

Firstly, we don't know who is speaking, or to whom; we also don't know where 'here' is, or what
happened. Our questions will tend to be 'where, who, what?' and probably also 'when?'. The speaker
and his audience, however, have no such problem; they are in the context, they know the topic, so they
use deictic expressions or words to reference (or 'show') what they are talking about.

There are several examples of deixis in the sentence we have just looked at, e.g: 'Here', 'you' and
'where'. These are deictic expressions of place, person and location.

Let's now recreate the earlier example, starting from context:

'If you come over here I can show you where it happened, all that time ago.'

A tour guide is showing his group around an old fort where a famous battle took place a few hundred
years ago. He says to them: 'If you come over to this part of the castle, I can show you where the siege
took place 500 years ago.'

Here we have context: we know the speaker is a tour guide; we know he is speaking to a group of
tourists; we know where they are (the castle); we know what he is talking about (the siege) and when it
took place (500 years ago).

Let's say we are now either the tour guide or the tourists. At this point, the tour guide starts to move
over to one of the ramparts of the castle, and instead of repeating all the above information, the guide
can simply say: 'If you come over here, I can show you where it happened all that time ago.' This avoids
stating the obvious, it saves time repeating information already given, and both the guide and his
audience understand immediately what he is referring to. At this point, a specific reference becomes a
deictic reference, through the use of words such as 'here', 'it', and 'that'.

NOTE: The pronouns 'I' and 'you' retain the same form as before, but their function shifts - they are now
also deictic expressions or words, and only those aware of the context will know to whom these
pronouns refer.

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Once we know the context, we will often automatically switch to deixis.

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Types of Deixis

Now that we have an idea how deixis works, let's look deeper into the various categories.

There are three traditional types of deixis:

Temporal - relating to time: the 'when'.

Spatial, or Local - relating to place: the 'where'.

Personal - relating to the speaker, or the person spoken to: the 'who'.

NOTE: the 1st and 2nd person pronouns (I, you, we) are typically active participants (in that they speak
and hear speech); the third person pronouns (she, he, they) refer to inactive, ie non-speech or narrated
participants.

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Temporal, Spatial and Personal Deixis

Looking at our earlier examples again, we can now identify temporal, spatial and personal deixis:
I wish you'd been here yesterday

'I' and 'you' are examples of personal deixis, (people)

'Here' is an example of local deixis, (place)

And 'yesterday' is temporal deixis. (time)

Last week I flew over there for a quick visit.

'Last week', which relates to when, is the temporal deixis,

'I' refers to a person, and becomes the personal deixis,

'There' refers to location, and is the local deixis.

See if you can identify the temporal, local and personal deixis in the following:

When he got there, he went straight to her.

We booked into this hotel last night; I think he's arriving tomorrow.

In the first, the speaker is referring to third party inactive participants: 'he' and 'her'. 'There' refers to
location, so it becomes location-specific (and therefore 'local deixis').

In the second, note 'this' becomes the local deixis, while 'last night' and 'tomorrow' refer to time, so
become 'temporal deixis'.Describe the Acquisition Stage of a human baby!How is Direct Speech Act
different from Indirect Speech Act?Can we have Coherence without Cohesion? How? Give example!
What is Aphasia?