1887
Volume 76, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0019-0829
  • E-ISSN: 1783-1490
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to summarize some preliminary research on textual cohesion in Hindi. The study of linguistic cohesion attempts to isolate linguistic devices used to ‘link’ sentences in a discourse. The present study was undertaken to find out exactly what cohesion devices are used in Hindi and how the linking texture of Hindi discourses differs from that of English.

Although both Hindi and English use some of the same cohesion devices, there are both quantitative and qualitative differences in their textures. This paper focuses on Hindi-particular cohesion devices and on devices differentially exploited to Hindi and English.

An example of a Hindi particular cohesion device is ‘Adjective Promotion’. The differential exploitation of the device of co-referential NP provides an example of the second type of difference between the two languages. Hindi uses it far more frequently than English.

Our results also provide evidence for the hypothesis that parallel sublanguages of Hindi and English are more alike in their cohesive texture than are different sub-languages of either of these two languages. ‘Stylistic contact’ in the domain of more technical sublanguage may provide an explanation for this.

Our study shows not only what some of the Hindi-particular cohesion devies are but also how a large number of shared cohesion devices are differentially exploited by different languages and what sorts of trade-offs are made amongst the major types of cohesion devices (semantic, syntactic, morphological, and lexical).

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/itl.76.01sin
1987-01-01
2025-02-17
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Bellert, Irena
    (1970) : On a condition of the coherence of texts. Semiotica2:335–363.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Dijk, Teun A. van
    (1972) : Some aspects of text grammars. The Hague, Mouton.
  3. Dittmar, N.
    (1976) : Sociolinguistics. London, Edward Arnold.
  4. Fillmore, C.J.
    (1973) : May we come in? Semiotica9:97–116.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Ford, A. and R. Singh
    (1979) : On Non-nominal Anaphora. Montreal Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol.11:227–234.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Grice, H.P.
    (1975) : Logic and conversation. InSyntax and Semantics, vol.3, 41-58, P. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds.). New York, Seminar Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Gutwinski, Waldimar
    (1974) : Cohesion in literary texts : a study of some grammatical and lexical features of English discourse. The Hague, Mouton.
  8. Halliday, M.A.K. , and R. Hassan
    (1976) : Cohesion in English. London : Longman Group (English Language Series 9).
  9. Kittredge, R.
    (1978) : Textual cohesion within sublanguages : implications for Automatic Analysis and Synthesis. Paper presented at the seventh International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 1978). Berger, Norway.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. (1982) : Variation and Homogeneity of sublanguages. To appear in Kittredge and Lahrberger eds.Sublanguages : Studies of Language in Restricted Semantic Domains. De Grayter.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Labov, W.M.
    (1970) : The study of language in its social context. Studium générale23:30–87.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Longacre, R.E.
    (1978) : Why we need a vertical revolution in linguistics. The Fifth Lacus Forum, 247–270.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Sachs, H.
    (1972) : Conversational analysis, mimeo.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Searle, J.
    (1969) : Speech Acts : an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
  15. Singh, R.
    (1977) : A note on supra-syntactic interference. ITL37:95–103.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Trudgill, P.
    (1974) : The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge : Cambridge University Pres.
  17. Williams, E.
    (1977 : Discourse and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry8; 1:101–139.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/itl.76.01sin
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error