The System Of Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 659):

… lexicogrammar has evolved textual resources for creating cohesive links that have the ability to indicate semantic relationships in the unfolding text beyond the domain of grammar. These resources are known collectively as the system of COHESION. Cohesion includes (1) the system of CONJUNCTION for marking textual transitions in the unfolding of text and (2) the systems of REFERENCE, ELLIPSIS & SUBSTITUTION, and LEXICAL COHESION for giving elements different textual statuses in the unfolding of text.

Logogenetic Patterns

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 659):

… in the course of unfolding of text, lexicogrammatical selections create logogenetic patterns at all ranks. This is patterning in the text that has nothing to do with composition or size: instead of composition (the relationship between a whole and its parts), the patterning is based on instantiation (the relationship between an instance and a generalised instance type). The patterning represents a slight move up this cline from the single instance to a pattern of instances, as in a news report where one projecting verbal clause after another is selected until this emerges as a favourite clause type. The logogenetic patterns that emerge as a text unfolds form a transient system that is specific to that text; but from repeated patterns over many such transient systems may, in turn, emerge a generalised system characteristic of a certain type of text or register.

The Complementarity Of Clause Complexing And Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 655, 657):

These two resources complement one another in the grammatical realisation of transitions in text. The general principle of complementarity is this: clause complexing does relatively more work locally, while conjunction does relatively more work non-locally and even globally. Clause complexing ‘choreographs’ the local development of text by means of univariate structure, indicating both taxis and type of logico-semantic relation. Conjunction can work together with clause complexing, reinforcing local relations, but it tends to take over from clause complexing as the relations become less local and more global. Looked at from the point of view of lexicogrammar, this means that the local organisation tends to be ‘tighter’ whereas the more global organisation tends to be ‘looser’. At the same time, looked at from the point of view of context, the more global organisation is subject to more contextual guidance in the form of generic structure. In this way, grammar and context complement one another in their contributions to the semantic organisation of text. …

However, this pattern of complementarity varies significantly across registers. In particular, in unselfconscious spoken text, clause complexing does relatively more work and conjunction relatively less. Here clause complexes can extend well beyond local relations, reaching a span of up to 20 to 30 clauses. Conversely, in planned written text, clause complexing does relatively less work and conjunction relatively more.

Textual Transitions: Conjunction And Clause Complexing

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 655):

While textual statuses are assigned to components of messages, textual transitions hold between whole messages, or groups of whole messages. Such transitions may, of course, be left to the listener or reader to infer, without the help of any explicit markers; but they may also be marked explicitly by means of textual or logical resources. The textual resource for indicating such transitions is the system of CONJUNCTION. Here the type of relation is indicated, but there is no distinction between paratactic and hypotactic relations. The logical resource combines type of relation with TAXIS in the univariate structure of clause complexing.

Textual Status And Lexical Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 654):

Unlike REFERENCE and ELLIPSIS, the resource of LEXICAL COHESION is, in general, neutral with respect to textual statuses; that is why we have not included it in Table 9-4. A given lexical item can be assigned any of the textual statuses; it is not predisposed to any particular status. Similarly, a given lexical relation is also neutral with respect to textual statuses. However, a particular lexical chain in a text is very likely to show some systematic pattern in relation to textual status.

Textual Statuses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 652):

The systems of THEME, INFORMATION, REFERENCE and ELLIPSIS are all concerned with textual statuses. Speakers assign these statuses to components of messages to help themselves produce texts and to help their listeners interpret them. These textual statuses are independently variable. For example, thematic status may be combined with either given or new, and the same is true of rhematic status. However, there are certain unmarked combinations: in the unmarked case, Theme is Given and New falls within Rheme. The thematic statuses and the favoured combinations are shown in Figure 9-5.

Textual Grammatical Resources Viewed 'From Above'

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 650, 652):

Looked at ‘from below’, these textual resources fall into two categories – those that engender grammatical structure (theme and information) and those that do not (conjunction, reference, ellipsis, lexical cohesion). Looked at ‘from above’, these textual resources are concerned either with textual transitions between messages or with textual statuses of components (elements) of these messages. These two classificatory perspectives are intersected in Table 9-19. 

The table indicates that structural and cohesive resources work together in the marking of textual transitions and in the marking of textual statuses. In the latter case, all the resources are indeed textual; but in the former, the structural resources are logical rather than textual – the logical relations of clause complexing. … The table does not include lexical cohesion. This is like reference and ellipsis in that it involves components of messages rather than whole messages; but it often works together with conjunction in the creation of relations in text. We shall thus have occasion to refer to it both in our discussion of textual statuses and in our discussion of textual transitions.

The Textual Resources Of The Lexicogrammar Of English

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 650):

We have identified the following features as those which combine to make up the textual resources of the lexicogrammar of English:

(A) structural

1 thematic structure: Theme and Rheme
2 information structure and focus: Given and New

(B) cohesive

1 conjunction
2 reference
3 ellipsis (that is, ellipsis and substitution)
4 lexical cohesion

Collocation: Register Variation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 650):

Notice, finally, that collocations are often fairly specifically associated with one or another particular register, or functional variety of the language. This is true, of course, of individual lexical items, many of which we regard as ‘technical’ because they appear exclusively, or almost exclusively, in one kind of text. But it is also noteworthy that perfectly ordinary lexical items often appear in different collocations according to the text variety. For example, hunting, in a story of the English aristocracy, will call up quarry and hounds (or, at another level, shooting and fishing); in an anthropological text, words like gathering, agricultural and pastoral; as well as, in other contexts, bargain, souvenir, fortune and such-like.

Collocation: Types Of Relation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 649):

In general, the semantic basis of many instances of collocation is the relation of enhancement, as with dine + restaurant, table; fry + pan; bake + oven. These are circumstantial relationships (for collocations involving Process + Manner: degree, e.g. love + deeply, want + badly, understand + completely), but as the example with smoke + pipe illustrates, participant + process relationships also form the basis of collocation – the most important ones involving either Process + Range (e.g. play + musical instrument: piano, violin, etc.; grow + old) or Process + Medium (e.g. shell + peas, twinkle + star, polish + shoes); and there are also combinations involving functions in the nominal group, in particular, Epithet + Thing (e.g. strong + tea, heavy + traffic, powerful + argument) and Facet + Thing (e.g. pod + wales, flock + birds, school + fish, herd + cattle, gaggle + geese).

While we can typically find a semantic basis to collocation in this way, the relationship is at the same time a direct association between the words; if pipe is in the text then smoke may well be somewhere around, at least with considerably greater probability than if we just pulled words out of a hat on the basis of their overall frequency in the language. We get ready for it, so to speak; and hence if it does occur it is strongly cohesive (cf. Hoey’s, 2005, notion of lexical priming).

Collocation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 648-9):

At the same time there are other instances of lexical cohesion that do not depend on any general semantic relationship of the types just discussed, but rather on a particular association between the items in question – a tendency to co-occur. This ‘co-occurrence tendency’ is known as collocation. For example,

A little fat man of Bombay
Was smoking one very hot day.
But a bird called a snipe
Flew away with his pipe,
Which vexed the fat man of Bombay.

There is a strong collocational bond between smoke and pipe, which makes the occurrence of pipe in line 4 cohesive. Clearly there is a semantic basis to a collocation of this kind; a pipe is something you smoke, and the words pipe and smoke are typically related as Range to Process in a behavioural process clause. Hence pipe here will be interpreted as ‘the pipe that he was smoking at the time’.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, smoke is not a behavioural Process, if only because pipe is not a Behaviour (the Range of a behavioural Process).

Meronymy vs Hyponymy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 648):

There is no very clear line between meronymy and hyponymy, especially with abstract terms; and a given set of items may be co-hyponyms of one term but co-meronyms of another – for example, chair, table, bed are ‘kinds’ (hyponyms) of furniture, but ‘parts’ (meronyms) of furnishings; forward, half-back, back are ‘kinds’ of players but ‘parts’ of a team, and so on. But since either relationship is a source of lexical cohesion it is not necessary to insist on deciding between them.

Meronymy: Examples

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 648):

The occurrence of any pair of items within the set will be cohesive; for example

||| On the left of the park lies the Exhibition Centre [[ which covers a massive 25,000 square metres of column-free space under the one roof]] . ||| Opened in January 1988, || the Centre is designed to hold major international exhibitions. ||| The glassed eastern facade is stepped back in five separate stages [[ that can be partitioned off to form smaller halls]]. ||| The fifth hall is linked by covered walkway to the Convention Centre. ||| 

||| Elfrida had a beautiful little glass scent-bottle. ||| She had used up all the scent long ago; || but she often used to take the little stopper out ||| ... 

||| She knelt down || and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden [[ you ever saw]] . ||| How she longed to get out of that dark hall, || and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, || ... 

where roof, facade, hall are meronyms of centre, stopper is a meronym of bottle, and flowers and fountains are co-meronyms of garden.

Hyponymy vs Meronymy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 647-8):

The general sense of hyponymy is ‘be a kind of’, as in ‘fruit is a kind of food’. There is a similar relation in the extending domain (Kinds of lexical relations playing a role in lexical cohesion). This is meronymy – ‘be a part of’. These two lexical relations are contrasted diagrammatically in Figure 9-4: given a lexical set consisting of either hyponyms, where x, y and z are all ‘kinds of’ a, or meronyms, where p, q and r are all ‘parts of’ b.

 

Hyponymy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 646-7):

Repetition and synonymy are both elaborating relations based on identity; one lexical item restates another. There is a second kind of elaborating relationship – attribution. This is based on classification (specific to general): the first lexical item represents a class of thing and the second either (i) a superclass or a subclass or (ii) another class at the same level of classification. For example:

And do you know anything about mediæval literature; have you ever heard of any other kinds of literature in the mediæval period besides Chaucer? 

Most limestone probably originates from organisms that remove calcium carbonate from sea water. The remains of these animals may accumulate to form the limestone directly, or they may be broken and redeposited. 

Noah’s wife and his sons’ wives went to the fields to gather fruit and grain and vegetables. They would need plenty of food for themselves and the animals on the ark. The remains of these animals may accumulate to form the limestone directly, or they may be broken and redeposited.

Thus in the last example, fruit, grain and vegetables are co-hyponyms of food.

Antonymy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 646):

A special case of synonymy is its opposite, antonymy. Lexical items which are opposite in meaning, namely antonyms, also function with cohesive effect in a text. For example, woke and asleep in

He fell asleep. What woke him was a loud crash.

Synonymy Without Identity Of Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 646):

The occurrence of a synonym even where there is no particular referential relation is still cohesive; for example, see Text 9-11

Text 9-11: Recreating – narrating (written, monologic): limerick
There was a man of Thessaly
And he was wondrous wise.
He jumped into a hawthorn bush
And scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw his eyes were out
With all his might and main
He jumped into a quickset hedge
And scratched them in again.

where the quickset hedge is not the same entity as the hawthorn bush but there is still cohesion between the synonyms hedge and bush.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, referential relations are distinct from, and irrelevant to, the functioning of lexical cohesion.

Tracking A Participant Through The Discourse

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 645-6):

In fact we might have (disregarding the scansion, of course) any of the following sequences:

four-&-twenty blackbirds ... the blackbirds began to sing
                     "                     the birds began to sing
                     "                     the creatures began to sing
                     "                     they began to sing

the reference item they being simply the most general of all. Compare ankylosaur ... creature in the following description of a dinosaur:

As an added means of self-defence the ankylosaur had a club on its tail. The creature may have been able to swing the club with great force and aim a savage blow at an enemy.

Such instances are typically accompanied by the reference item the. This interaction between lexical cohesion and reference is the principal means for tracking a participant through the discourse. Instead of the creature we might simply have had the personal reference it; and earlier in the same text, we find such examples:

Ankylosaurus – the “fused lizard” – was the largest of the ankylosaurs, but in spite of its size and frightening appearance it fed only on plants.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the source of the notion of 'tracking a participant through the discourse' — which Matthiessen again fails to acknowledge — is not Halliday, but Martin (1992), further elaborated in Martin & Rose (2007). This misunderstanding derives from Martin's confusion of textual reference with ideational denotation (and deixis), and consequently, his confusion of reference with lexical cohesion. Evidence here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007). In Martin's model, speakers are said to track themselves through a text, and participants are said to be tracked by being omitted.

Synonymy With Identity Of Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 645-6):

Here the range of potentially cohesive items includes synonyms of the same or some higher level of generality: synonyms in the narrower sense, and superordinates. For example, in

Four-&-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing.

we have one instance of repetition (pie ... pie) and one of synonyms (blackbirds ... birds). birds, however, is at a higher level of generality than blackbirds; it is a superordinate term. …

Related to these are examples such as the following, where there is still identity of reference, although not to a participant, and the synonym may not be in the same word class (cheered ... applause; cried ... tears):

Everyone cheered. The leader acknowledged the applause.
I wish I hadn’t cried so much! I shall be punished for it, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!

Synonymy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 645):

In the second place, lexical cohesion results from the choice of a lexical item that is in some sense synonymous with a preceding one; for example sound with noise, cavalry with horses in

He was just wondering which road to take when he was startled by a noise from behind him. It was the noise of trotting horses. ... He dismounted and led his horse as quickly as he could along the right-hand road. The sound of the cavalry grew rapidly nearer ...

Here again the cohesion need not depend on identity of reference. But once we depart from straightforward repetition, and take account of cohesion between related items, it is useful to distinguish whether the reference is identical or not, because slightly different patterns appear.

Lexical Item: Inflectional And Derivational Variants

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 644-5):

… in order for a lexical item to be recognised as repeated it need not be in the same morphological shape. For example, dine, dining, diner, dinner are all the same item, and an occurrence of any one constitutes a repetition of any of the others. Inflectional variants always belong together as one item; derivational variants usually do, when they are based on a living derivational process, although these are less predictable. (For example, rational and rationalise are probably still the same lexical item, though the relationship between them has become rather tenuous; but neither now goes with ration — rational is closer to reason, though not close enough to be considered the same item.)

In Landor’s line

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife

there is a strongly felt cohesion between strife and strove, suggesting that strive, strove and strife are one and the same lexical item.

Repetition

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 644):

The most direct form of lexical cohesion is the repetition of a lexical item; e.g. bear in

Algy met a bear. The bear was bulgy

Here the second occurrence of bear harks back to the first. In this instance, there is also the reference item the, signalling that the listener knows which bear is intended; and since there is nothing else to satisfy the the, we conclude that it is the same bear. But this referential link is not necessary to lexical cohesion; if we had Algy met a bear. Bears are bulgy, where bears means ‘all bears’, there would still be lexical cohesion of bears with bear. In this case, however, there would be only one tie; whereas in the example cited first there are two, one referential (the) and one lexical (bear).

The Primary Types Of Lexical Relations

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 643-4):

The primary types of lexical relations are listed in Table 9-17. They derive from either the paradigmatic or the syntagmatic organisation of lexis. (i) The paradigmatic relations are inherent in the organisation of lexis as a resource, as represented in Roget’s Thesaurus. They can be interpreted in terms of elaboration and extension, two of the subtypes of expansion … . (ii) The syntagmatic relations hold between lexical items in a syntagm that tend to occur together, or collocate with one another. Collocates of a lexical item can be found in the entries of certain modern dictionaries based on corpus investigations. Since syntagmatic organisation and paradigmatic organisation represent two different dimensions of patterning, any pair of lexical items can involve both.

⁹ Collocation includes, but is not confined to, relationships that can be interpreted as enhancing.

Lexical Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 642-3):

The types of cohesion we have discussed so far all involve grammatical resources – grammatical items (conjunctions, reference items, substitute items) and grammatical structure (absence or substitution of elements of structure). However, cohesion also operates within the lexical zone of lexicogrammar. Here a speaker or writer creates cohesion in discourse through the choice of lexical items. … lexical cohesion comes about through the selection of items that are related in some way to those that have gone before.

Just as ellipsis and substitution take advantage of the patterns inherent in grammatical structure (ellipting and substituting particular elements of structure such as the Head of a nominal group), so lexical cohesion takes advantage of the patterns inherent in the organisation of lexis. Lexis is organised into a network of lexical relations such as the ‘kind of’ relations obtaining between fish and salmon.

Ellipsis–&–Substitution vs Co-Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 642):

But the most important distinction, which again follows from the different nature of the two types of relationship, is that in ellipsis the typical meaning is not one of co-reference. There is always some significant difference between the second instance and the first (between presuming item and presumed). If we want to refer to the same thing, we use reference; if we want to refer to a different thing, we use ellipsis: Where’s your hat?—I can’t find it.—Take this (one). Each can take on the other meaning, but only by making it explicit: another hat (reference, but different), the same one (substitution, but not different). Thus reference signals ‘the same member’ (unless marked as different by the use of comparison); ellipsis signals ‘another member of the same class’ (unless marked as identical by same, etc.). The difference is most clear-cut in the nominal group, since nouns, especially count nouns, tend to have clearly defined referents; it is much less clear-cut in the verbal group or the clause.

Within the nominal group, ‘another member’ means a new modification of the Thing; Deictic (this one, another one, mine), Numerative (three, the first (one)), or Epithet (the biggest (one), a big one). In the verbal group, it means a new specification of polarity, tense or modality through the Finite element (did, might (do), hasn’t (done)); and there is a slight tendency for ellipsis to be associated with change of polarity and substitution with change of modality. This tendency is more clearly marked with the clause, where ellipsis adds certainty (yes or no, or a missing identity), whereas substitution adds uncertainty (if, maybe, or someone said so); this is why, in a clause where everything is ellipsed except the modality, it is quite usual to use a substitute (possibly so, perhaps so) unless the modality is one of certainty – here we say certainly (elliptical), rather than certainly so:

Have you got a nicorette on you? – Certainly.

Blogger Comments:

Reference: Steve played badly and he was soon eliminated.
Ellipsis: Steve played badly and Ø was soon eliminated.

That is, in these typical uses of reference and ellipsis, the relation in both is one of "co-reference".

Ellipsis–&–Substitution vs Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 641-2):

We remarked earlier that ellipsis is a relationship at the lexicogrammatical level: the meaning is ‘go back and retrieve the missing words’. Hence the missing words must be grammatically appropriate; and they can be inserted in place. This is not the case with reference, where, since the relationship is a semantic one, there is no grammatical constraint (the class of the reference item need not match that of what it presumes), and one cannot normally insert the presumed element. Reference, for the same reason, can reach back a long way in the text and extend over a long passage, whereas ellipsis is largely limited to the immediately preceding clause.

The Fusion Of A Nominal Substitute With Modifier

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 641):

In some instances the nominal substitute fuses with a Modifier, as in yours, none in the following:

I haven’t finished the crocodile story completely. And then we’ll hear yours [your story], okay? 

But he won’t get any benefit for his early plea of guilty or contrition. – No absolutely none [no benefit].

These can be analysed as elliptical, the elements my, your, no, etc. having a special form when functioning as Head.

The Parallel Developments Of The Verbal And Nominal Substitutes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 641):

Like do in the verbal group, the nominal substitute one is derived by extension from an item in the structure of the full, non-elliptical group – in this case the indefinite numeral one, via its function as Head in a group which is elliptical as in

Anyone for teas or coffees? – Yeah, I’ll have one; I’ll have a coffee. …

The parallel development of the two substitutes, verbal do and nominal one, is as shown in Table 9-15:

Substitution vs Ellipsis In The Nominal Group: Count vs Mass Nouns

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 640-1):

There is a nominal substitute one, plural ones, which functions as Head; it can substitute for any count noun (that is, any noun that is selecting for number, singular or plural); for example,

A: But I’ve got a depression quilt at home. – B: You’ve got that one that Marcia gave you. – A: That Marcia gave me from the American. – B: The Amish one, isn’t it?

She’s got she’s got Big Pond which she said which is apparently not a terribly good provider. – No. – Mmm. No. I thought Yahoo was one of the better ones [providers].

I have always had hot water bottles. I think they’re, the last couple disintegrated. I had a nice bright yellow koala shaped one.

There’s reefs around bloody Australia, isn’t there? – Yeah; a Great Barrier one, I believe. – It’s a big one, I think.

With mass nouns, ellipsis is used instead of substitution:

Do you want some more wine? White or red [∅: wine]? – White [∅:wine].

Ellipsis Within The Nominal Group

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 640):

Ellipsis within the nominal group was referred to in Chapter 6, where it was shown that an element other than the Thing could function as Head; for example any in

I’ll ask Jenny about laptops and find out whether we have got any [∅: laptops].

Substitution In The Verbal Group

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 640):

Substitution in the verbal group is by means of the verb do, which can substitute for any verb provided it is active not passive, except be or, in some contexts, have. The verb do will appear in the appropriate non-finite form (do, doing, done). Examples:

Does it hurt? –Not any more. It was doing last night. 

Yeah but I’m doing night shift too. If I have to teach people on night shift as I have done, I do night shift and then I do day shift and get a couple of hours off and then do night shift and day shift.

As we have seen, this do typically substitutes for the whole of the Residue (or, what amounts to the same thing, when the verb is substituted by do, the rest of the Residue is ellipsed). Since there are no demonstrative verbs – we cannot say he thatted, he whatted? – this need is met by combining the verb substitute do with demonstratives that, what (serving as Range in the transitivity structure). For example:

I did cross-eye in the middle of my art. – I can’t do that. – I can.

What did your father do? – He was an architect.

What are you going to do with Blubba? – Oh, I don’t know.

This is one thing I haven’t worked out with this phone whether, cause my old phone used to ring you to let you know you had a message. – Yeah. Does this one not do it?

The form do not functions as a single reference item.