Text grammar

1. Text grammar Cohesion and Coherence

2. remember Text: the record of some speaker�s or writer�s discourse, uttered or written in some context and for some purpose. Remember: No texts are constructed in isolation. Language is a social practice.

3. And that� Meaning is dependent on context: the events and situational factors in which acts of communication are embedded, i.e. the subject, the purpose the circumstances, the physical context, the relationship between addresser and addressee, their previous contact with each other, and the topic

4. And also Language has varieties: there are regional and social varieties or registers. Register can be divided into field of discourse (subject matter: chemistry, linguistics, music) tenor of discourse (sometimes referred to as style, e.g formal, informal, intimate) and mode of discourse (medium of the language activity, spoken, written, twitter).

5. Language is used in a variety of domains (public, personal, occupational, educational). The interplay of contexts and domains has brought about the development of recognisable text types There are regular variations of form according to register and genres develop from register used for a particular purpose.

6. Encounters lead to expectations We learn to recognise genres by being exposed to them, the texts we have encountered and have expectations. The way we read a text depends on how many similar texts we have read before and the expectations we have about such texts.

7. Text as interaction Most texts have distinctive features which are typical of and act as signals of the language variety or genre they belong to. We interact with the text using these signals to construct meaning from it.

8. Beyond the sentence: Although sentences can occur on their own, they usually form texts (these can be written or spoken). There are three prerequisites for a text. A text makes sense, it is somehow complete and it has coherence and cohesion.

9. When is a text not a text? We can tell whether something is a text e.g. Text 1. Pick up a handful of soil in your garden. Ordinary, unexciting earth. Yet it is one of nature�s miracles and one of her most complex products. Your success as a gardener will largely depend on its condition, so take the first step in gardening. Get to know your soil.

10. It makes sense We can understand what the text is about. We can translate it. We can paraphrase it . We can summarise it. We can explain the meaning to someone else.

11. It is somehow complete It is made up of sentences, not bits of sentences. E.g. Can I have a�. is not a complete sentence we know there is something missing at the end ��were not very clear Is not a complete text we know there is something missing at the beginning

12. Summary of the text Our text was taken from the first page of a book about gardening. The first paragraph introduces the idea of the important role played by the soil, underlining how unremarkable it is in physical terms but how miraculous it is in terms of it properties, and encourages the reader to become familiar with this element.

13. Cohesion Cohesion is the set of grammatical and lexical connections between sentences which are linked together into a text. There are several of these elements in our text.

14. Cohesive features Text 1. Pick up a handful of soil in your garden. Ordinary, unexciting earth. Yet it is one of nature�s miracles and one of her most complex products. Your success as a gardener will largely depend on its condition, so take the first step in gardening. Get to know your soil.

15. Coherence? Fertilizers put back what the rain and plants take away. Plastic pots are not just substitutes for clay ones. Pears are a little more temperamental than apples. Supporting and training are not quite the same thing.

16. Incoherent Although there are some cohesive features in the text it is not coherent. It does not really say anything coherent that one could paraphrase. It seems to be talking about a lot of unconnected things even though it is on the topic of gardening. In fact it is taken from the first line of each chapter of the gardening manual.

17. Cohesive features Texts have texture as we have seen. The sentences in a text are linked together into a cohesive whole, the elements are in some way tied together, they are linked by a series of devices known as cohesive ties. Without cohesive ties, texts become a collection of isolated sentences; they are the devices a language uses to achieve unity and cohesiveness in texts, written or spoken.

18. cohesion Five kinds of cohesion have been identified: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction which are kinds of grammatical cohesion using closed sets. and lexical cohesion which uses the resources of the lexical system by using the same, similar or related words in successive sentences so that the later occurrences refer back to and link up with the previous occurrences.

19. Lexical cohesion and lexical cohesion which uses the resources of the lexical system by using the same, similar or related words in successive sentences so that the later occurrences refer back to and link up with the previous occurrences. The two broad types of lexical cohesion are reiteration (four kinds: repetition, synonymy, superordinates, general words) and collocation which refers to the habitual company which words keep, cohesion resulting from the occurrence of a word�s collocates.

20. Grammatical cohesion Reference is a semantic relation. It ensures the continuity of meaning in a text involving items which cannot be interpreted without recurrence to the surrounding text (endophoric reference), or outside the text to the situation (exophoric reference).

21. Endophoric reference Reference to elements which can be reconstructed from inside the text. It can be cataphoric (pointing forwards as in This is how he said it�) or, much more commonly, anaphoric, pointing backwards e.g. I met John in the station. He was completely drunk. Where he in the second sentence refers back to John in the first sentence). Only endophoric reference is cohesive since it refers to another point in the same text. In the majority of cases it is anaphoric.

22. reference There are three kinds of reference: personal, demonstrative and comparative. To be able to understand, produce and analyse texts you will need to know how to recognise them.

23. Personal reference Use of the personal pronouns, possessive pronouns (mine, yours etc) and possessive identifiers (my, your etc). Most pronouns replace noun phrases so as to be economical and avoid excessive repetition. Sometimes the third person pronoun it can refer back not to a noun or a noun phrase but to a larger unit, sometimes even more than one sentence. Third person pronouns are nearly always endophoric but first and second person pronouns can be exophoric.

24. Demonstrative reference involves the demonstrative (this, that , those, these) the definite article (the) and the adverbs (here, now, there, then) they are a form of verbal pointing (known as deixis indicating proximity, or with variable reference). They can also be used to refer to extended text. This can refer to something the speaker has said and that to something the other person has said. The former and the latter discriminate between entities mentioned one before the other in an earlier part of the text.

25. Comparative reference: may be general, expressing the identity, similarity or difference between things or particular expressing a qualitative or quantitative comparison. He earns 12000� a month. I wish I had such a salary. She was wearing an orange sweater with a purple skirt with holes in it. I couldn�t bear to see her so badly dressed. The same man was seen later leaving the pub accompanied by a young girl Naples is much livelier than other cities. His right hand held a formal evening top-hat. He had a glove in the other hand.

26. Substitution: is a grammatical relation where one linguistic grammatical item substitutes for a lexical one. The substituted item can only be interpreted by reference to the original longer item. There are three kinds of substitution nominal, verbal and clausal. Nominal substitution is when one or ones in pronominal use substitute a singular or a plural countable noun, and the substitution of the whole noun phrase by the same .

27. Nominal substitution This Coke is flat. Get me a fresh one. This bulb is broken . Give me a new one. These magazines are old. Let�s look at some newer ones. Give me a pint of Guinness and a packet of crisps. I�ll have the same.

28. Verbal substitution: Substitution of a verb: is carried out by means of the various forms of do functioning as pro-verbs substituting for some lexical verb mentioned previously. Did you manage to finish that homework? I didn�t but Martin did. Does anyone live in Grosseto? I need a lift. I do.

29. Clausal substitution: Replaces a whole clause and not just a verb: It is carried out by means of so to replace an affirmative clause and not to replace a negative one Is there a strike on Saturday? They say so. Are you going to Grosseto? If so, we could travel together. If not I�ll take the bus.

30. Ellipsis Ellipsis is similar to substitution but the item concerned is replaced by nothing. There is an obvious structural gap which can only be revealed by a previous sentence. Nominal ellipsis involves the omission of a head noun or noun phrase. Ten students passed and another ten failed. Which jeans are you going to wear? These are the nicest.

31. Verbal ellipsis Verbal ellipsis involves the omission of a lexical verb form a verb phrase and possibly an auxiliary or two, only recoverable from reference to a previous sentence. Is it going to rain today? It may, it may not. Have you been crying? No, laughing.

32. Clausal ellipsis Clausal ellipsis is concerned with the omission of large parts of clauses, whole phrases and more. Who has taken my car keys? Peter. Where did you leave those library books? On the floor in the bedroom.

33. Conjunction refers to specific grammatical devices, conjunctions, which link sentences to each other. Additive conjunctions add on information Adversative conjunctions draw a contrast Causal conjunctions make a causal link Temporal conjunctions make a time link between two sentences.

34. Conjunctions e.g. Additive: and, in addition, Adversative: but, yet, however, Causal: so, therefore, consequently Temporal : then, after that, subsequently

35. Lexical cohesion the use of the same or similar or related open-class words in successive sentences Reiteration: where the same word is repeated. Try speaking for one minute without repeating a word and you will see how difficult it is to avoid using reiteration. You can avoid it by using Synonyms: words of a similar meaning Superordinates: words of a higher order of classification General words: superordinates of much higher order which subsume the meaning by indicating a class of objects, entities, people

36. General words General words, a range of lexical words which need their context to be fully understood which describes a certain class of objects. What shall I do with all this stuff? These are a number of these words, they are basically superordinates: people, man, woman, child, boy to refer to humans. To refer to non-human animates we can find creature, inanimate concrete things thing, object. Inanimate concrete mass stuff. Inanimate abstract nouns have a number of possible general words like business, matter, affair. Referring to actions you can use words like move, action, and for places place.

37. anaphoric nouns A whole range of cohesion producing nouns which talk about the discourse itself and can be used as pro-forms standing for other more complete and explicit units: such as admission, accusation, answer, assumption, belief, complaint, conclusion, criticism, hypothesis, declaration, point, proposal, statement, suggestion. For example: He wanted to go out and spend a day in the hot pools in Saturnia then go to a restaurant he knew nearby but no-one was interested in that proposal. The proposal involves the outing including hot pools in Saturnia and the meal at the restaurant.

38. Collocation: either words which habitually go together e.g. heavy drinker, or from the same lexical field or set of fields, for example an article about a road accident might have one set of words which are collocates on the topic of injury, another set about roads and weather conditions and another to do with the highway code.

39. Coherence Coherence is concerned with logical links which mean that the text makes sense as a whole. It is concerned to a great extent with our knowledge of the world which comes from our previous experience and learning, we use this to process texts. texts therefore can seem incoherent to people who have very different backgrounds from the person writing.

40. schemata We can talk of having certain expectations. Sometimes we talk about schemata, frames, scenarios to refer to these expectations. They often help us to predict the content, finish a text which is unfinished, re-order jumbled texts or reconstruct illegible elements in a text. Background knowledge plays an important part in understanding texts

41. Cohesion and coherence Cohesion consists of linguistic elemetns in the text which are related to each other in some way and weave the text into a whole Coherence is related to overall text meaning and the way it related to the real world and is consistent Reading: Sticky business