Text grammar

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Text grammar

• Cohesion and Coherence

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remember

• Text
• the record of some speakers or writers
  discourse, uttered or written in some context and
  for some purpose.
• And context
• No texts are constructed in isolation. Language
  is a social practice.

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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

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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).

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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.

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

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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

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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

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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 _at_3? Frank's got a bug and Tony
  wants me to take his place at the admissions
  cttee. Sorry to dump on you.M

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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.

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Language variation register

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

TUC warns of strikes over pensions crisis
BRITAIN'S EMPLOYERS were put on alert yesterday that employees were increasingly prepared to take industrial action to defend their pensions, now the single most important issue at work.
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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

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Unplanned Context dependent
Planned Context independent
Can you you place these texts on the continuum?

• 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

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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.

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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
  natures 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Cohesive features

• Text 1. Pick up a handful of soil in your garden.
  Ordinary, unexciting earth. Yet it is one of
  natures 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 words collocates.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 couldnt 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.

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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 .

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Nominal substitution

• This Coke is flat. Get me a fresh one.
• This bulb is broken . Give me a new one.
• These magazines are old. Lets look at some newer
  ones.
• Give me a pint of Guinness and a packet of
  crisps.
• Ill have the same.

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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 didnt
  but Martin did.
• Does anyone live in Grosseto? I need a lift.
• I do.

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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 Ill take the bus.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Conjunctions e.g.

• Additive and, in addition,
• Adversative but, yet, however,
• Causal so, therefore, consequently
• Temporal then, after that, subsequently

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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

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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.

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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.

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Collocation

• either
• words which habitually go together e.g. heavy
  drinker, we dont 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.

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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.

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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

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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