UNIT 1: Cohesion: Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis; hedging.

Define coherence
Coherence is concerned with the overall interpretation of a text as a unified piece of
discourse
Coherence relates to the macro level features of a text which help it to make sense as
a whole. The ways a text makes sense to readers and writers through the relevance
and accessibility of its configuration of concepts, ideas and theories.

Define cohesion
Cohesion relates with the micro level of the text i.e word, and sentence and how they
join or link together.
Cohesion, we are concerned with the formal (but at the same time semantic) links
between clauses, how an item – a pronoun, a noun or a conjunction – in one clause
may refer backwards or forwards to another clause.
The grammatical and lexical relationship between different elements of a text which
hold it together. Describes the process of referring to other parts of a text, using
words like they, this, and some to create a well-organized piece of writing.
The most common cohesive devices are personal pronouns (she, him, its, their,etc),
demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those) and words such as the same, both,
some, and respectively.
● The refrigerated unit of a supermarket is often its single biggest area.
● The suburbs are considered to be safer than inner-city areas. This is
why some people choose to live then.
● Not all eco-friendly businesses want to be labelled ‘green’. Some, in
fact, distance themselves from the term.

These are used to refer backwards to things already mentioned, but it's also possible
to refer forwards.
● Placing a job advertisement on the internet may result in applications
from around the world. Until they (refer forwards to the candidates)
notice the opportunity, some of the candidates may never have thought
of working outside their home country.
 These pronouns are all commonly used as cohesive devices in writing: the subject
pronouns he/she/ it and they; the object pronouns his/her/it and them; and the
possessive adjective his/her(its/ and their.
This, these can refer to a specific noun phrase that has recently been mentioned
● The government is planning to introduce a new law or privacy. If it were
to be passed, this legislation would add an extra layer of protection to
the existing laws.

Halliday and Hasan classify cohesive devices into five categories: reference,
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Type of grammatical cohesion
❖ Reference
❖ Substitution
❖ Elipsis
❖ Conjunction

Of the five major classes, reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion appear in
written discourse, but substitution and ellipsis are more frequent in conversation

❖ Reference
One of the options that grammar of English offers creating surface links between
sentences is reference. A reference item is a word or phrase, the identity of which can
be determined by referring to other parts of the text or the situation. It include
personal pronouns, such as I, you, he, she, it; possessive adjectives, such as my, your,
his, her; possessive pronouns, such as mine, yours, his, hers; demonstratives, such as
this, that, these, those; and the definite article, the.
Personal reference is the reference by means of function in the speech situation,
through category person. Includes; personal pronouns can be the words ‘he’, ‘she’,
‘they’.
possessive pronouns ‘his, her, theirs’
possessive determiners

Demonstrative reference is reference by means of location, on scale of proximity.

The examples of demonstrative reference are the words “this”, “that”, “those”,
“these”

Comparative reference is indirect reference by means of identity or similarity

([Link]). The examples of comparative reference are the phrase “such similar”,
“so similarity”, “other different else”

Definite reference: the definite article, the, as an item that can be used as a
referring item. This is a less transparent type of reference. The most frequent use of
definite reference is exophoric. Halliday and Hasan identify two ways in which
exophoric definite reference:
1. refers to something which is specific to the given [Link] The water’s too cold
when standing with my interlocutor by a swimming pool, I am clearly referring to the
water in the pool.

2. An exophoric definite reference may refer to something which is specific to a

community (referred to by Martin [1992] as context of culture), for example, the
president,the baby, the piano. This type of reference is also sometimes called unique
reference or homophora.

Exophora involves exercises that require the reader to look out of the text in order to
interpret the referent. The reader, thus, has to look beyond or out of the text with a
shared world between the reader and the writer.
Exophoric reference directs the receiver ‘out of the text and into an assumed shared
world’. For example: ‘that must have cost a lot of money’ in this example we have to
look out of the situation to retrieve the meaning of the sentences. exophoric reference is
not included as part of cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976: 18).
Endophoric reference points to the textual environment of a given element can be either
Anaphoric or Cataphoric. Brown and Yule point relations and form cohesive ties within
the text.
Anaphoric reference is a form of presupposition and means that a reference
item points back to something that has gone before.
such an instance of anaphoric reference in which “he” refers back to “John”
in the preceding sentence.

➢ John goes fishing every other week. He is a very good

fisherman.

Cataphoric reference, as an oppositional term to anaphoric reference, works

the other way around. Here, a usually abstract reference item points forward to
a specific element within the subsequent text for this interpretation. In this
sentence for example the reader has to look at the whole sentence to make
sense of the second word “it” which refers to the specific item “watch” at the
[Link] written text, cataphoric reference often occurs after a colon,
semicolon or dash following the reference item(3)

➢ There it is my, so much admired watch.

➢ Remember this. Never trust a stranger.
➢ The following are the winners: Susan, Christopher and Ali.

Substitution and ellipsis are closely related to each other, as they both
involve the replacement (substitution) or removal (ellipsis) of material
which would otherwise be anticipated in the text

❖ Substitution
A substitute word of phrase is replaced by another, for example, Which book do
you want? I’ll take the red one. Substitution may be nominal, as in the example
just given; it may be verbal(do,be, have) , for example, I have coffee every morning
and he does too, where have coffee every morning is substituted by does; or it can
be at the level of the whole clause, for example, A: I am so ugly, B: Okay, if you
say so, where the whole clause, I am so ugly, is replaced by so. negative (not)

❖ Elipsis
 Halliday and Hasan refer to ellipsis as a variation on substitution. It is
described by them as ‘substitution by zero’, something is omitted. Ellipsis
may be at the level of the noun group, verbal group or complete clause.
The following are examples
of each:

a) He potted the pink ball and then the black. (nominal)

b) John played tennis and Peter football. (verbal)
c) A: Do you play tennis?
B: No. (clausal)
Question and answer routines involving substitution and ellipsis are
typically practised in drills such as the following:
A. Do you like tennis?
B. Yes, I do./No, I don’t.
a. Does she like tennis?
b. Yes, she does./No, she doesn’t.
A. Do they like tennis?
B. Yes, they do./No, they don’t.

❖ Conjunction

Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: 536) describe conjunction as a system for

marking what they refer to as logicosemantic relations. They distinguish four
major types of conjunction :
ADDITIVE (for example, and, in addition, besides, furthermore)
ADVERSATIVE (for example, but, yet, though, however)
CAUSAL (for example, so, then, therefore)
TEMPORAL (for example, then, next, after that, finally)
Coordinating Conjunctions. We can use a coordinate structure for any slot in
the sentence by using a coordinating conjunction [and, or, but,yet,nor, for. The
coordinating conjunctions also join complete sentences:
I disapproved of his betting on the horses, and I told him so.
Correlative Conjunctions: (both—and, either—or, neither—nor, not only—but
also) connect both complete sentences and elements within the sentence. Within
the sentence either—or and neither-nor arc used alike:

As a connector of complete sentences, neither-nor requires the subject

auxiliary shift; either-or does not:

Not only-but also can be used both within and between sentences:

Conjunctive Adverbs (Adverbial Conjunctions): join sentences to form

coordinate structures as other conjunctions do, but they do so with an adverbial
emphasis.

Result: therefore, consequently, as a result, of course

Concession: nevertheless, yet, at any rate, still, after all, of course
Apposition: for example, for instance, that is,namely; in other words
Addition: moreover, furthermore, also, in addition,likewise, further
Time: meanwhile, in the meantime
Contrast: however, instead, on the contrary, on the other hand, in contrast, rather
Summary: thus, in conclusion, then
Reinforcement: further, in particular, indeed, above all,in fact

Subordinating Conjunctions: show a relationship between two ideas in which

one of them is a dependent or subordinate [Link] subordinating conjunctions are
both single words and phrases:
Time: when, whenever, after, as, before, once, since,till, until, now that, while,
as long as, as soon
Concession: though, although, even though, if, while
Contingency: if, once
Condition: if, in case, as long as, unless, provided that
Reason: because, since, as long as
Result: so that
Comparison: as, just as, as i f
Contrast: while, whereas
❖ Hedging is the use of linguistic devices to express hesitation or uncertainty as well as
to demonstrate politeness and indirectness. Most fundamental for using hedged
language are:
1. To minimize the possibility of another academic opposing the claims that
are being made
2. To conform to the currently accepted style of academic writing
3. To enable the author to devise a politeness strategy where they are able to
acknowledge that there may be flaws in their claims
Commonly used words and phrases in hedging:
● Introductory verbs – seem, tend, look like, appear to be, think,
believe, doubt, be sure, indicate, suggest
● Certain lexical verbs – believe, assume, suggest
● Modal Adverbs – possibly, perhaps, conceivably
● That clause – It could be the case that…, it might be suggested
that…, there is every hope that…

UNIT 2: Repetition, Reiteration; Connectors (Conjunctions and adverbs)

Repetition is when ideas or objects are repeated across a text. Particularly

common in poetry (though less so in academic writing), a writer may repeat a
word or phrase or a more complex parallel structure such as a series of clauses
to form cohesion between ideas, as in the examples below:

The use of synonyms is another method that a writer may call upon to show the repetition
of ideas throughout a text, although this method is more lexical in nature:
 Connectors
conjunctions and connectors describe the relationship between two statements. These
statements can be written without linking words, but often more information can be succinctly
conveyed using these words. Conjunctions grammatically join two clauses (independent or
dependent, depending on the conjunction) so that it reads as one sentence. Connectors are
used between two separate sentences.

Conjunctions: a word or group of words used to connect words, phrases, or

[Link] involves the use of formal markers to relate sentences, clauses
and paragraphs to each other.
Four categories: Additive, Adversative, Causal and Temporal.
The main relations are summarized below, with examples of conjunctions which can or
typically realize each relation.
● additive: The additive is a kind of conjunctive relation which is closer to
coordination. Additive words are such as and, or, or else, also, in addition,
furthermore, besides, similarly, likewise, by the way, that is, for instance;
● adversative:Adversative conjunctions express contrast between two statements.
Conjunctions of this type are such as but, yet, however,whereas, while, instead,
on the other hand,nevertheless, as a matter of fact;
● causal: Causal relation involves primarily reason, result and purpose relations
between the sentences. Causal words such as so,thus, hence, therefore, in that
case, consequently, it follows, for, because, under the circumstances,
accordingly, for this reason;
● temporal: The relation between two successive sentences. Conjunctions of this
type are such as then, next, after that, on another occasion, in conclusion, an
hour later, finally, at last.

UNIT 3 Lexical Cohesion; Cohesive chains

LEXICAL COHESION
(achieved by the selection of vocabulary)
Halliday and Hasan (1976) have two subcategories of lexical cohesion: reiteration and
collocation.
Reiteration of a lexical item in a text may be by repetition of a word, use of a synonym,
a near synonym, a superordinate or a general class word.
a) I would like to introduce Dr Johnson. Dr Johnson is our head of department.
(repetition)
b) He has worked in a coal mine all his life. He first went down the pit when he was
a boy.
(synonym)
c) Our computer system is one of the most sophisticated in the country.
The network has been running for several years now. (near synonym)
d) As part of our America week, RTHK revels in some of the most
expressive music of that continent. (superordinate)
Collocation is the way in which words are used regularly together. The term
‘collocation’ is also used in lexicography and Corpus Linguistics where it tends
to mean relations between adjacent items. (cohesion that is achieved through the
association of lexical items that regularly co-occur. these lexical items or words
tend to occur in similar environments)
Two systems operate within collocation: hyponomy and antonymy. Hyponomy
concerns the relations between groups of words all falling under one
superordinate. Thus apple, orange, banana and lemon are all hyponyms of the
superordinate fruit. Chair, desk, sofa and table are hyponyms of the
superordinate furniture. Antonymy is concerned with opposites; thus large and
small and happy and sad are pairs of antonyms.
The general category includes all of those systems which can be described semantically,
including repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy (part–whole relations) and
antonymy.
Halliday now has three major categories: elaborating relations (which include
repetition, synonymy and hyponymy), extending relations (meronymy) and collocation

According to Paltridge(2000:134), lexical cohesion refers to the relationship among lexical

items in –a text and, in particular, among content words. Lexical cohesion refers to the role
played by the selection of vocabulary in organizing relations within a text. The main kinds
of lexical cohesion are reiteration, synonymy, antonymy,hyponymy,meronymy,and
collocation.
1. Reiteration: refers to words that are repeated in the text.
2. Synonymy: refers to the relationship between words that are similar to
meaning.
3. Antonymy: refers to opposite meanings such as good and bad, happy and sad.
4. Hyponymy: refers to classes of lexical items where the relationship is one of
general-specific' or 'a type of', such as animal and a lion.
5. Meronymy: refers to lexical items which are in a whole part relation.
6. Collocation: describe associations between words that tend to co-occur, such
as,combinations of adjectives and nouns,as in 'quality product', 'snide remarks
'and' discerning customers'.
 7. General nouns and signalling nouns: Halliday and Hasan describe as ‘a
small set of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun classes,
those such as “human noun”, “place noun”,“fact noun” and the like.’ They
provide the following examples and classes:
a) people, person, man, woman, child, boy, girl – human;
b) creature – non-human animate;
c) thing, object – inanimate concrete count;
d) stuff – inanimate concrete mass;
e) business, affair, matter – inanimate abstract;
f) move – action;
g) place – place;
h) question, idea – fact.

Cohesive chains
Cohesive ties do not operate in isolation, but combine together in cohesive
[Link] of all the links in a chain can be either grammatical or lexical.
Second, in any text, it is likely that different chains are operating simultaneously.
Third, we can distinguish two types of chain: identity chains and similarity chains. In
identity
chains, all of the links in the chain refer to the same entity, they are co-referential.
With similarity chains,they all belong to the same class of entities. Similarity relations
may be cases of co-classification (belonging to the same class) or co-extension
(belonging to the same general field of meaning).
 Unit 4 Passive voice 5 Nominalization y 6 Cleft structures

Passive voice
The passive markers are the auxiliary be, used in the form required by the context
of the utterance (this concerns primarily tense and aspect), combined with the past
participle of the verb. The passive can combine with modal verbs

Instead of be, the lexical verb is sometimes used to form the passive as well.
It is never obligatory. It is sometimes said to be more common with verbs with an
unpleasant connotation (get robbed, get killed, get attacked, get broken), but this is not
always the case.

Nominalization
A nominalization is a verb or adjective that has been turned into a noun. The word itself
exemplifies the thing; nominalizing the verb nominalize produces the noun
nominalization. Here are some other examples:

Cleft structures
 A cleft sentence is a sentence that is cleft (split) so as to put the focus on one part
of it. The cleft sentence is introduced by it, which is followed by a verb phrase
whose main verb is generally be. The focused part comes next, and then the rest
of the sentence is introduced by a relative pronoun, relative determiner, or
relative adverb. If we take the sentence Tom felt a sharp pain after lunch, two
possible cleft sentences formed from it are It was Tom who felt a sharp pain
after lunch and It was after lunch that Tom felt a sharp pain."
A cleft sentence consists of two parts, often starting with "it" or "wh-". For
example "It was the lecturer who started the experiment."It-clefts are relatively
frequent in academic texts Wh-clefts - "What I object to is violence on TV" are
most common in conversation.

Unit 7 Register

REgister
What is a register? Halliday and Hasan (1985/1989: 38–39), define register as ‘a
configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular situational
configuration of field, mode, and tenor’. Register is a set of linguistic choices
associated with a particular situation. These situations are usually related to
professional activity( the language of teachers, doctors, students) or interests (
bridge-playing, bird-watching, music-making). Register is an idealised concept which
allows us to make predictions about what lexicogrammatical features are likely to
occur in any given situation.
Registers identified according to:
Field
Field tells us just what the text is about. For example, in a job application letter, the field
is jobs: there is a job opening that is being applied for.
Mode
Mode is how the text is produced. In terms of mode, the example job application letter is
a written discourse conducted and laid out as a typed letter. The formal lay out and typed
text would have the effect of reinforcing the serious and respectful nature of the text.
 Tenor
Tenor is about who is involved in the discourse and the relationship between the
participants. In a job application letter, the tenor is the prospective employer, as the text is
addressing a person who is interested in hiring a new employee.
The writer might not know exactly who will read the text, but assumes that it is someone
who is potentially interested in hiring them to do a job and would therefore find the
letter relevant to them. The language would be typically formal.
As a whole, tenor is influenced by mode and field. Depending on who the reader is
intended to be, the writer would alter how he/she conveys the message.

Unit 8 Academic register

Academic Register
Academic registers are the language conventions for writing and speaking in professional
academic contexts. Being aware of these conventions makes it easier to follow such
content—we understand why it's written the way it is.

Register - Genre Analysis

The term ‘genre’ means ‘kind’ or ‘form’ and was used by the Greek philosopher in his
Poetics to refer to major types of literature: poetry, drama and the epic.
The term ‘genre’ is used rather differently and refers to different communicative events
which are associated with particular settings and which have recognised structures and
communicative functions. Examples: business reports, academic lectures, news articles,
recipes, religious
sermons, political speeches, curriculum vitae, and more recent ‘virtual’ genres such as
various types

GENRE AND REGISTER

We defined register as a type of language associated with a particular field of activity or
profession.
Genres may also be associated with particular fields of activity or professions,they are
specific
communicative events. Instruction manuals (a type of genre) may be used in the field of
aviation, by airline pilots, but they are also used in many other fields and by many other
professions.

Register - Corpus
A corpus (plural corpora) is a large collection of language, usually held electronically,
which can be used for the purposes of linguistic analysis. Gavioli and Aston (2001: 238)
have noted, even the very large corpora consists of less language than will be encountered
by average humans in their daily life. The composition of these corpora is different to what
the individual experiences in real life, many, if not most of them consisting of written
language.
● What is corpus linguistics?
Corpus Linguistics is the application of computational tools to the analysis of corpora, in
order to reveal language patterns which systematically occur in them. The rationale for
such an analysis is that large amounts of text can be analysed automatically.
Corpus analysis can provide a combination of the frequency of all the words or phrases
and a
record of all of the verbal environments in which these words occur (known as a KWIC
[key word in context] analysis or concordance).
A key insight of corpus linguists is the phraseological nature of language, how language is
(at least partly) made up of more or less prefabricated multiword chunks, for example, on
the one hand, by the way, today I’m going to. Sinclair (1991) referred to this tendency as
the idiom principle. The idiom principle can be contrasted with the open-choice principle,
which has traditionally informed linguistics, whereby the speaker has many word-for-word
options in building up discourse, that is to say,that many words possibly fit into any given
slot, as long as they are grammatical
What are some of the features that Corpus Linguistics can analyse?
word frequency
Collocation: Collocation is the combination of lexical words with one another.
Collocates are identified by concordancers, which display the node word in the centre of
the screen, allowing for identification of their collocates on both the left and the right. If
words immediately
Following the node word to the right are ordered alphabetically, then it is easy to identify
those items which most typically collocate with the node.
Colligation: refers to the grammatical, as opposed to lexical, environments in
which a word occurs. Hoey uses the word consequence to demonstrate colligation.
Analysing a large corpus of data from the Guardian newspaper. colligation refers to the
grammatical associations of a word in a sentence, textual colligation refers to the position
where the word tends to occur within a discourse
Semantic prosody: refers to the meaning associations that words carry with them
by virtue of their typical collocations with sets of semantically related words.
Semantic preference: the concern is with sets of words semantically related,
according to the systems of synonymy, meronymy and antonymy or which are typically
associated with particular registers or genres. Words belonging to such sets can typically
be found to collocate in corpora. It refers to the meaning relations attaching to collocating
sets

Macro-structure
Macro-structures are assumed to be semantic structures of discourse whose meaning and
reference is defined in terms of their constituents' meanings. Macrostructure focused on the
global meaning that more emphasized on the meaning of discourse theme or topic.
Macro-rules:
Since macro-propositions need not be explicitly expressed in the text, we need some
mapping rules to obtain the macro-structure from the micro-structure of the discourse,rules
to transform one proposition sequence into another `at another level!' of description. This
kind of semantic transformation we will call a macro-rule. The macro-rules must preserve
global truth and meaning.
● The first macro-rule is GENERALIZATION: example. Someone says he has a cat, a
dog and a parrot, we may describe the same state of affairs with the more general
statement that he has (three) pets. GENERALIZATION holds for predicates in
general, and hence applies both to nouns and verbs of the discourse. the reductive
nature of the macro-rule of GENERALIZATION is based on the deletion of certain
essential properties which at some macro-level have become irrelevant, such that a
whole set of discourse referents may be denoted by their common superset.
● The next rule, DELETION deletes full propositions from a given text base. it is delete
everything that is not content words(noun are important but adjective and adverb
must be necessary)
 ● The macro-rule of CONSTRUCTION organizes micro-information by combining
sequences of propositions that function as one unit at some macro-level; it reduces
information without simply deleting it; and it introduces information at the
macro-level that is `new' in the sense of not being part of the text base or entailed by
individual propositions of the text base. (concluir con el pensamiento inductivo)

Superstructure
The superstructure specifically tends to be the discourse framework or being organized by
conventional schemata. It explains more on how parts of the text are arranged into the
whole news, for example, the arrangement of the introduction, substance, and conclusion.
Which part is placed at the beginning, or which parts are placed later, it will be arranged as
discourse-framer importance.

micro-structure
Microstructure points on local meaning of the discourse, by observing the semantics,
syntactic, stylistic and rhetoric aspects. The use of words, propositions, etc. Microstructure
is an effective way to observe the next rhetorical and persuasive process when someone
conveys the order. Certain words perhaps are chosen to clarify the choice and posture,
form political consciousness, etc. The microstructure is divided into four aspects, that are
semantic aspects, syntactic aspects, stylistic aspects, and rhetoric aspects.
Semantic aspects: the meaning and interpretation of words, signs, and sentence structure.
Semantics largely determine our reading comprehension, how we understand others, and
even what decisions we make as a result of our interpretations.
Syntactic aspects: the part of linguistics that studies the structure and formation of sentences.
It explains how words and phrases are arranged to form correct sentences. A sentence
could make no sense and still be correct from the syntax point of view as long as words are
in their appropriate spots and agree with each other.
Stylistic aspects: is the study and interpretation of texts of all types and/or spoken language
in regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language
used by different individuals and/or in different situations or settings.
Rhetoric aspects: The rhetorical situation can be described in five parts: purpose, audience,
topic, writer, and context. These parts work together to better describe the circumstances
and contexts of a piece of writing, which if understood properly, can help you make smart
writing choices in your work.

1. What is nominal substitution? provide an example

2. What is verbal substitution? provide an example
3. What is clausal substitution? provide an example
4. What is ellipsis? Provide an example
5. What is “definite reference”? Provide an example.
6. What verb forms are available in English?
7. What is the structure of verb groups in English (order of auxiliaries)?
Auxiliary Element: Realization:
0 + Head: They play football here.
Inflectional morpheme -ed1 + Head : They played...
Auxiliary verb + Head: They may play football here
 Aux. verb + inflectional morpheme (-ed2/-ing)+ Head: They have played ...
Aux. verbs + inflectional morphemes (-ed2/-ing)+ Head: They may have been
playing…
- the auxiliary be (in conjunction with the -ing participle (verb + -ING) of a verb2)
is the marker for progressive aspect (3a)
- the auxiliary have (in conjunction with the past participle (verb + -EN) of a verb)
is the marker for the perfect tenses (3b)
- the auxiliary be (in conjunction with the past participle) is also the usual marker
for the passive voice (3c)
(3) (a) The birds are singing; it must be spring.
(b) Our guests have arrived – let’s pop open the champagne!
(c) At the beginning of the term, students are told to buy the book.

8. What is cohesion?
9. What is “exophoric” cohesion ?
10. Explain with examples the difference between endophoric and cataphoric reference?
Active - passive
A. Someone had broken the window by 3:00 p.m
B. A strange man was watching us.
C. Next year my students will have studied the passive voice.
D. We are working on the report right now.
E. My manager has told him to arrive earlier.
F. They could not have made the mistake.
G. I hope they are going to hire me soon.
H. By tomorrow morning, they will have washed my car.
I. It seems that someone cleaned the office on tuesday.
J. I don’t like people seeing me in my pyjamas.
K. the traffic might have delayed Jimmy
L. I like someone looking after me when I'm ill.
M. She hates people laughing at her.
N. They are building a new stadium near the station.
O. A workman will repair the computer tomorrow.