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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5.6.3.3. Comparatives and conjunctions

5.6.3.3. Comparatives and conjunctions

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

As discussed in Section 3.2.3, comparatives are, in a sense, the odd ones out, as the members of this category do not form a closed set; moreover, they are not likely to form chains of more than two items. In addition, the analysis of abstracts showed that we need to be careful with the ambiguity inherent in the interpretation of items such as different. If it had an indefinite meaning of various, it is not cohesive, but was still categorized as such in one instance:

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 5. In this paper, we focus on one type of cohesive tie, conjunction, and compare its use in four different American English genres – fiction, journalism, religion, and science.
s. 6. Our results show that methods of conjunction in these genres vary in a statistically significant way and that conjunctions, although few in number of types and tokens, play a major role in structuring these different text types.
(Abstract 2)

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Another problem was that in this analysis of abstracts we followed the original Cohesion Analysis where the description of the method does not specify whether in phrases with multiple referring items should be coded as one tie or two, and if the former, which type has precedence over the other and why. Consequently, many inter-coder mismatches were due to inconsistency in this respect as well. Although they are not to be regarded referential, in many cases it is difficult to show a difference between conjunctions and reference. One such example in the present analysis is more recently (from Abstract 1, example below) which was marked as conjunction by one coder, and as comparative reference by the other who regarded as the presupposed item the time frame of the previous sentence (i.e., recent) which is linguistically only realized by the present perfect tense. Still, this disagreement again points to the need to clarify that it is essentially in nominal types of phrases where more establishes comparative chains.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 3. It has also been used to distinguish between essays written by groups of native English speakers with varying degrees of writing proficiency (Witte, 1983a, 1983b).
 
s. 4. More recently, TSA has distinguished between higher and lower rated ESL essays, but with different results from those found with native speakers of English (Connor & Schneider, 1988).
(Abstract 1)

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The comparative items higher and lower compare two sets to each other and are not cohesive. The link between sentences 3 and 4 above is exemplified by a lexical tie (essays – ESL essays) which is not the focus in this analysis. The conclusion from such mistakes is that when observing one phenomenon in connection with texts, it is not enough to give a description of what it is, but it must be explicitly stated what it is not, by defining other uses a certain item may have and why it is not cohesive in those senses.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The taxonomy is not very clear about the difference between comparatives, demonstratives and conjunctions concerning items such as then or the second. These may establish referential links between sentences (demonstrative: then; comparative: ordinal second), or may also be conjunctions that establish temporal, sequential relations (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In the following example from our data the markers did not agree on the categories of the items in bold (in the example below) based on the taxonomy.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

s. 5. Two separate studies using a multivariate approach will then be described.
s. 6. One examines patterns of variation in English and Brazilian Portuguese newspaper editorials (Dantas-Whitney and Grabe to appear); the second examines the variations in writing among Ecuadorian Spanish and Anglo-American English university students (Lux 1991).
(Abstract 3)

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

While one is a pro-form here (substituting one study) and as such, it is an instance of ellipsis, one and the second together point back to two separate studies. While the question of ellipsis has already been settled (in Chapter 3), stating that ellipsis will not be counted as an instance of reference in sentences like this, the analysis of second part of sentence 6 is quite confusing. Both the definite article and the ordinal suggest reference; however, without one reference to the full NP in sentence 5 would not be established. In any case, this example shows, on the one hand, that in the description of the analytical method, the difference between ellipsis and reference needs to be emphasized, and on the other hand, that in academic writing, it is a constantly recurring question whether to include nominal ellipsis in the analysis.
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