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. • And context: • No texts are constructed in isolation. Language is a social practice.

3. And …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 , e.g.( recipes, news reports, essays, novels, poems, contracts, prescriptions etc) • There are regular variations of form according to register and genres develop from register used for a particular purpose.

6. Encountersleadtoexpectations • 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. • NB. When learning a language you should try to be exposed to as many texts and different text types as possible

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. • NB. You need to actively ask yourself what a text is and what features you can identify and make hypotheses about your expectations. You cannot understand a text by being passive

8. Spoken vs written mode • Some features of spoken language • Fillers: um, er • Repetition: ‘a friend of mine like he er suddenly turned up er in the airport my best friend’ • Discourse structure: e.g. the opening • Double subject (my friend, he) • Repetition (a friend, my best friend) • hesitations

9. Language variation: register • Task 2. Mode 1. Monday 5 October Dear Dan, I'm writing you a quick note as I missed you this afternoon. Would it be possible for you to take my first-year stylistics seminar for me next Thursday at 3pm? Because Frank is ill the department needs someone senior to take his place at the University's Admissions Committee meeting, and our beloved leader says I'm the only person who knows all the relevant background details. The meeting clashes with my class, I'm afraid, which will be very difficult to reschedule, and as far as I can see, you are the best person to take it over. I hope you can you help me out. I'd be grateful if you could let me know tomorrow (Tuesday) at the latest. Best wishes, Mick 2. A. got a minute dan? sorry to um barge in like this but I need a f-favour - suddenly I can't teach my thursday at 3 class - frank's gone down with some bug and er I've got got to reprerepresent the department at the er the university admissions committee starts at 2 - can you run it for me? B. yeah no problem A. you're a mate I owe you one B. no big deal I've already prepared the stuff for my class 3. From: Short, Mick Sent: 05 October 2002 To: McIntyre, Dan Subject: can you do me a favour Hi DanI need a quick favour. Can you tyeach my class Tyhursday @3? Frank's got a bug and Tony wants me to take his place at the admissions cttee. Sorry to dump on you.M

10. Language variation: register • Task 3. Domain • The following provisions of this clause are a Statement of the general aims of the Charity to which the Trustees are (subject to the following) to have regard at all times but no part of or provision in such Statement is to qualify derogate from add to or otherwise affect the Objects set out in clause 3.1 and the furtherance of the Objects (which shall in the event of any conflict prevail over such Statement) • The exact way in which information is 'coded' in the auditory nerve is not clear. However, we know that any single neurone is activated only by vibration on a limited part of the basilar membrane. Each neurone is 'tuned' and responds to only a limited range of frequencies.

11. Language variation: register • Task C. Tenor • PENSION AXE VOW UNIONS yesterday threatened a wave of strikes to stop bosses axing workers' pension schemes.

12. Taking for granted or making explicit • In informal situations we do not need to make everything explicit, we can take things for granted. In formal situations, when it is important to avoid ambiguity, or when participants do not want to presume a relationship that is not established, things will be made very explicit • Often the distinction is not so much between written and spoken but rather between whether a text is produced in a context dependent situation and whether it is planned or unplanned

13. Unplanned Context dependent Planned Context independent • a political speech • a conversation in a shop • an academic lecture • a phone call to a friend • a joke • TV news broadcast • a novel • a sign e.g. ‘no bicycles’ • a magazine article • chat • a letter • a form Can you you place these texts on the continuum?

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. Cohesive features • Text 1. Pick up a handful of soil in yourgarden. Ordinary, unexciting earth. Yetit is one of nature’s miracles and one of her most complex products. Your success as a gardener will largely depend on its condition, sotake the first step in gardening. Get to knowyoursoil.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. cohesion • Five kinds of cohesion have been identified: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunctionwhich 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.

25. 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.

26. 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).

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. 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 .

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.

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

41. 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

42. General words • General words, a range of lexical words which need their context to be fully understoodwhich 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, andfor places place.

43. 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.

44. Collocation: • either • words which habitually go together e.g. heavy drinker, we don’t say big drinker or deep drinker • We say ask a question and perform an operation • 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.

45. 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.

46. 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

47. 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: Dispensa Cohesion and coherence