Lexical cohesion Reiteration Theory of Discourse Analysis
criterion is the grammatical function of the substitute item. According to Halliday and Hasan, there are three types of substitution. Those are nominal, verbal, and clausal.
The following is a list of the items that occur as substitutes: Nominal
: one, ones, same Verbal
: do Clausal
: so, not Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 91
There is a borderline where substitution shades into lexical cohesion,
involving the use of general words such as thing in a cohesive function Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 91. The general words, which correspond to major classes of lexical
items, are very commonly used with cohesive force. The substitute one and do can be thought of as being as it were the highest point in the lexical taxonomy of nouns and
verbs respectively; as such, they constitute a closed class, and so acquire a purely grammatical function. But they do function more or less as lexical items.
iii. Ellipsis
The next form of grammatical cohesion is ellipsis. Ellipsis is very similar to substitution. It can be defined simply as „substitution by zero‟. The starting point of
the discussion of ellipsis can be the familiar notion that is „something left unsaid‟ and another way of referring to ellipsis
is in fact as „something understood‟, where understood is used in special sense of „going without saying‟ Halliday and Hasan,
1976: 142 Where there is ellipsis, there is a presupposition, in the structure, that
something is to be supplied, or „understood‟. The essential characteristic of ellipsis is
that something which is present in the selection of underlying options is omitted in the structure-
whether or not the resulting structure is in itself „incomplete‟ Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 144.
In brief, the difference and similarity among the concept of reference, substitution, and ellipsis is that reference is presupposition at semantic level. A
reference item signals that the meaning is recoverable, though not necessarily be replaced by what it presupposes; even if the presupposed item is present in the text.
Then, substitution and ellipsis are presupposition at the level of words and structures.
iv. Conjunction
According to Halliday and Hasan, conjunction is rather different in nature from the other cohesive relations, from both reference, on the one hand, and
substitution and ellipsis on the other 1976: 226. It is not simply an anaphoric relation.
Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings; they are not primarily devices for reaching out into the
preceding or following text, but they express certain meanings which presuppose the presence of other components in the discourse Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 226.
Later Halliday and Hasan classify conjunction into four types of conjunction. Those are additive, adversative, causal, and temporal. The distinction of those types can be
illustrated as follows:
For the whole day he climbed up the steep mountainside, almost without stopping.
a. And in all this time he met none. additive
b. Yet he was hardly aware of being tired. adversative
c. So by nighttime the valley was far below him. causal
d. Then, as dusk fell, he sat down to rest. temporal
Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 226. The additive is generalized semantic relation in text-forming component of the
semantic system, that is based on the logical notion of „and‟; and it is one of a small set of four such relations that are grouped together under the heading of conjunction.
Next, the basic meaning of the a dversative relation is „contrary to expectation‟. The
expectation may be derived from the content of what is being said, or from the communication process, or the speaker-hearer process. Under the subtopic of causal
relations are included the specific ones of result, reason, and purpose. These are not distinguished in the simplest form of expression; so, for example, means „as result of
this‟, „for this reason‟, and „for this purpose‟. The last one is temporal relation. It is expressed in its simplest form by then.