Day 2 - 17.02.2009 - session 5 w/ Damian Williams

That was our first session on discourse.

What makes a text cohesive?

1. Verb Form;

Form of the verb in one sentence can impose limits on verb forms in subsequent sentences. One of the examples that Damian gave us is that people use the present tense when narrating stories (the historic present) in order to make the history more immediate.

2. Parallelism;

form of one sentence or clause repeats the form of another. Some of the examples that were mentioned in class:

- She came, she saw, she conquered.

- Part human, part horse, part elephant, the horselephantman can't socialise! (hehehe)

3. Pronominal Reference;

- Anaphoric reference (sth already mentioned) - There was a pineapple on the table, so I ate it.

- Cataphoric reference (refer fw in the text) - Nobody seemed to know where they came from, but they were in the forest: Kanga and Baby Roo.

- Exophoric/xenophoric reference (use of rhetorical Qs - reader in the text) - Peter, Paul and Mary decided not to follow the unicorn. What would you have done?

4. Repetition and Lexical chains;

The use of different words to refer to the same thing - similar words, synonyms / antonyms, hipernyms (furnitute - table, chair etc.), hiponyms (pigs, hens - animals), and merrynyms (He could not see me there but when I heard his footsteps I knew it was over...)

5. Substitution;

People do not answer with full sentences in real life. Should our Ss do it?

- Do you like pineapples? Yes, I do. Yes, I think so.

6. Ellipsis;

When we drop parts of the sentence.

What are you doing? Eating a pineaaple.

7. Conjunctions;

There are different types of conjunctions:

- Additive: they add information. Duh! (and, plus, moreover, furthermore etc.)

- Adversive: express contrast. (however, but, on the other hand, nevertheless etc.)

- Causal: express reason. (because, so, therefore, due to, consequently etc.)

- Temporal: time. (formerly, later, next, then, in the end etc.)

- Ellaborative / exemplitive: elaborate or exemplify. (for instance, thus, in other words, in fact etc.)

- Discoursal: to change topic. (by the way, well, anyway, moving on, whatever etc.)

On the 2nd part of the session he gave us a handout with a text and we would have to find examples of the formal links above.