Overbiew of Cohesive Relation in Modern English

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, University of Bayreuth, 2 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Normally, speakers of English who are to read an English text passage that is more than on sentence long, are normally able to identify without difficulties whether the passage forms a unified entity or whether it reflects just a mere collection of unrelated sentences. Thus, there must be certain features which are characteristic of texts which can be identified contributors to the unity of the text and which are not found otherwise. A text- and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text - is a semantic unit of written or spoken language which consists of a number of sentences showing coherence and cohesion. Coherence is an extra-linguistic factor which refers to the property of a text as a meaningful entity, for both, the writer and the reader and the consistency of subject matter. Cohesion is a linguistic factor which includes grammatical and semantic devices by which sentences are connected to form texts. Thus, coherence and cohesion can be considered the resources that English has for creating texture. For creating cohesion, there are a number so called cohesive devices: reference, substitution, conjunction, ellipsis. Some forms of cohesion are realized through the grammar and others through the vocabulary. (Halliday 1976: 6). Lexical cohesion is the term referring to realization through vocabulary. This essay will give an overview of the cohesive relations Modern English has in order to form texture. It will provide more detailed information on cohesion and introduce as well as elaborate on the cohesive devices known in English. The final conclusion will summarize the major points. [...]