Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

Lexical cohesion establishes semantic (through lexical devices, such as
repetition, equivalence - synonymy, hyponymy, hyperonymy, paraphrase,
collocation) and pragmatic (presupposition) connectedness; in contrast with the
previous types of cohesion, it operates over larger stretches of text since it
establishes chains of related references.
REITERATION – the repetition of the same lexical item + the occurrence of
a related item.
There’s a boy climbing that tree.
a. Repetition
The boy’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.
b. A synonym or near-synonym
The lad’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.
c. A superordinate
The child’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.
d. A general word
The idiot’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.
REFERENCE: There’s a boy climbing that tree.
a. Identical
The boy’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.
b. Inclusive
Those boys are always getting into mischief.
c. Exclusive
And there’s another boy standing underneath.
d. Unrelated
Most boys love climbing trees.
Coherence in linguistics is what makes a text semantically meaningful.
The notion of coherence was introduced by Vestergaard and Schroder as a way
of talking about the relations between texts, which may or may not be indicated
by formal markers of cohesion. Beaugrande/Dressler define coherence as a
“continuity of senses” and “the mutual access and relevance within a
configuration of concepts and relations” . Coherence, as a sub-surface feature of a
text, concerns the ways in which the meanings within a text (concepts, relations
among them and their relations to the external world) are established and
developed. Some of the major relations of coherence are logical sequences, such
as cause-consequence (and so), condition-consequence (if), instrumentachievement (by), contrast (however), compatibility (and), etc. Moreover, it is the general ´aboutness´, i.e., the topic development which provides a text with necessary integrity; even in the absence of overt links, a text may be perceived as coherent (i.e., as making sense), as in various lists, charts, timetables, menus.
Coherence is present when a text makes sense because there is a continuity
of senses which holds a text together – it has to be semantically and logically OK.
George entered the room. He saw Mary cleaning the table.
John fell and broke his neck. (?) John broke his neck and fell.