Gabriella Jenei: Referential Cohesion in Academic Writing • A descriptive and exploratory theory- and corpus-based study of the text-organizing role of reference in written academic discourse
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5. STAGE 1: HALLIDAY AND HASAN’S COHESION ANALYSIS: THE STARTING POINT
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5.6. Results and discussion
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5.6.3. Analytical problems concerning the types of reference
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5.6.3.2. The definite article

5.6.3.2. The definite article

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

As it is usually the case, most of the referring items were nominals with a definite article. Differences between the two coders sometimes occurred as a result of different interpretations of grammatical and textual cohesion. In Abstract 1 below, for example, in sentence 6, the essays obviously refers to the three groups of essays in sentence 5. But what about the other two items?

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 5. The present study replicated the previous ESL study of two groups of essays written for the TOEFL Test of Written English with three groups of essays.
 
s. 6. Findings indicate that two topical structure variables, proportions of sequential and parallel topics in the essays, differentiate the highest group from the two lower rated groups.
(Abstract 1)

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Strictly following the instructions on how to conduct the analysis using the taxonomy, the original presupposed item (here: three groups of essays) is the presupposed item for all three definite NPs. Still, it is questionable, whether they point via the preceding item in the same sentence, or independently. The arrows in the two examples from Abstract 1 show these two interpretations. The first interpretation allows for one cohesive tie, whereas in the second, there are three ties. See the text extract from Abstract 1 below.
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Another example is Abstract 5, where one of the coders coded the conversations as forming a cohesive tie with conversations in the previous sentence, while the other coder did not count it, because the presupposed item could also be a conversation in the same sentence, which would not be considered an instance of a cohesive tie.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 2. This paper reports on how speakers of Kiswahili, native and non-native, close conversations.
 
s. 3. In this paper I show that 1) closings in Kiswahili are quite elaborate and may extend to over five turns at talking, 2) an exchange of ’goodbyes’ does not usually signal the end of a conversation, 3) there is no strict ordering of features and 4) some closing features are linked to the opening part of the conversation.
(Abstract 5)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Sentence 3 is also a good example of a sentence where both markers had doubts about the sentence boundaries.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

For the definite article, it is frequently difficult to decide whether it is cohesive or not, as its presence may be attributed to grammatical necessity. As in the following example, where the definite article was counted as a tie in only one of the analyses:

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 1. Title: Multivariate approaches to contrastive rhetoric
s. 2. The purpose of this article is to describe applications of multivariate quantitative research approaches to contrastive rhetoric research.
...
s. 4. We will then present the rationale for the multivariate approach used here. (Abstract 3)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

On the one hand, the noun is definite in sentence 4, because it is specified by the adjectival modifier that follows it; it is also definite because it points to the full form multivariate quantitative research approaches two sentences before it. This ambiguity has already been referred to in Section 3.2.2, where a fourfold reference was mentioned. Halliday and Hasan (1976) do not give any practical guidance on how to deal with such issues. This, and similar examples with modifiers caused many of the mismatches between the different analyses of abstracts.
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