Cohesion and Coherence 衔接和连贯.ppt

1、Cohesion and Coherence,Presenter: Tory,Concepts of Coherence,Text vs. Discourse Texture The notion of Coherence,Text vs. Discourse,The term text is used in linguistics to refer to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does from a unified whole. It may be anything from a single pro

2、verb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to an all-day discussion on a committee. (Halliday and Hasan,1976) Some (Coulthart) think that text only refers to written language, not including spoken. Leech employs the term discourse to refer to communicative language.,We can say that the term

3、s do not refer to different domains (speech and writing) but reflect a different in focus. Discourse is the umbrella term for either spoken or written communication beyond the sentences.,Text vs. Discourse,Texture,A semantically coherent text must have texture. Texture distinguishes text and non-tex

4、t. (1)A: How old is your son? B: He is seven. (2) A: How old is your son? B: She is playing in the garden. (2) is semantically incoherent, she has no referent.,The notion of Coherence,We should first realize what coherence intuitively means for language users. (normal, understandable) Coherence may

5、also be taken as predicted not of a sentence, but of pairs, triplesof sentences or of fragments or the whole of a discourse. Coherence may also be predicted of a sentence relative to the whole.,Claire and Kent climbed Mt. McKinley last summer. She photographed the peak, and he surveyed it.,e.g.,Cohe

6、sion,Cohesion is a semantic concept, it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text. Cohesion is achieved by cohesive ties. Some may call them cohesive devices. Cohesive ties are the forces that keep the text together in the original order and what we manipulate when we try to regain a

7、 texts meaning after a recording of its sentences.,Five types of the general phenomenon of Cohesion,Reference Substitution Ellipsis Conjunction Collocation,Reference,A participant or circumstantial element introduced at one place in the text can be taken as a reference point for something that follo

8、ws.,Reference,anaphoric relations: look back in the text for their interpretation. cataphoric relations: look forward for interpretation.,e.g. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, Had a wife and couldnt keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell. And there he kept her very well. (anaphoric relations),Substitut

9、ion,Another kind of formal link between sentences is the substitution. Here a word in the second sentence refers not to exactly the same entity as does the related word in the first, but to some other entity to which the same term would be applicable.,Three types of Substitution,Nominal: one, ones,

10、same Verbal: do (inflectional forms: does, did) Clausal: so, not.,Examples of three types of Substitution,1)A: Have you any knives? I need a sharp one. B: I can get you several very sharp ones, but this is the best (one) I have.,(nominal substitution),2) Bob says he is going to join the Labour Party

11、. It will be interesting to see whether he does (do). (Verbal Substitution) 3) A: Bruce is a good actor. B: I dont think so. (clausal substitution),Ellipsis,Omitting part of sentences on the assumption that an earlier sentence or the context will make the meaning clear is known as ellipsis. e.g. A:

12、Why didnt you lead a spade? B: I hadnt got any.,Three types of Ellipsis,nominal ellipsis verbal ellipsis clausal ellipsis,He had to admit that Sarahs drawings were as good as his own. Nigel finished the exam at the same time as George.,Examples of Ellipsis,In fact, ellipsis is a very important cohes

13、ive device in dialogue, a guarantee that speakers are concentrating together on a single topic and on the background knowledge relevant to the topic and on the background knowledge relevant to the topic. In fictional dialogue, ellipsis suggests intimacy and intensity.,Advantages of Ellipsis,Are you

14、married? he asked from the bed. I was standing against the wall by the window. Not yet. Are you in love? Yes. With the English girl? Yes. Poor baby. Is she good to you? Of course. E. Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms,Conjunction,Conjunction is a cohesive relation which obtain between clauses as well as

15、sentences of a text which are indicated connectors. Some of linguistic connectors: and, moreover, or, otherwise, but, so, if, as, beforeetc,additive adversative causal temporal,Four types of Conjunction,e.g. To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! (additive) All the figures were correct

16、; theyd been checked. Yet the total came out wrong. (adversative) We may not be able to set up permanent decisions. Therefore, it seems to me that we must take, so far as we can, so far as we can, a picture of the world into our minds. (casual) The first man landed on the moon. At the same moment, a

17、 young boy died in Alabama. (temporal),Collocation,There are other instances of lexical cohesion which do not depend on any general semantic relationship of the types just discussed, but rather on particular association between the items in questiona tendency to co-occur. This co-occurrence tendency

18、 is know as collocation.,Examples of Collocation,Why does this little boy wriggle all the time? Girls dont wriggle. The relationship between boys and girls is called complementary in Lyons classification.,We can conclude that cohesion between pairs of words is not fulfilled by way of repetition or s

19、ynonymy, but also by pairs of opposite words, such as tall-short, come-go, or by the same ordered series, such as north-south, or by sets of items that are not easy to classify in systematic semantic items: ill-doctor, king-crown.,Conclusion of Collocation,I bought a Ford. A car in which President Wilson rode down the Champs Ekysees was black. Black English has been widely discussed. The discussion between the presidents ended last