Cohesive substitution in English and German 203
1.2 Different perspectives on ‘cohesion’
As far as the concept of cohesion is concerned, we distinguish attempts at mod-
elling cohesion arising mainly out of (1) philosophical, (2) rhetorical/stylistic,
(3) psychological or (4) linguistic orientations.
Philosophical perspectives on cohesion usually assume that, beyond clause
semantics, there is something called ‘coherence’ within and between larger dis-
course segments. A prime example is Relevance Theory and its discussion of
‘explicitness vs. implicitness of linguistic meaning’ (see Carston 2002: 15ff ), which
we have extensively discussed in Hansen-Schirra et al. (2007: 242ff ). Other phil-
osophically-based approaches are ‘Discourse Representation Theory’ (Kamp &
Reyle 1993) with its modelling of discourse segments and relations between them,
earlier ‘Situation Semantics’ and its notions of ‘completeness and coherence’ of
discourse situations and situation types (Barwise & Perry 1983). What character-
izes these philosophical traditions as far as their treatment of ‘cohesion/coherence’
is concerned is that they do not make a distinction between the two (see Kamp
& Reyle 1993: 53), because their main interest is in the main types of ‘coherence/
cohesiveness’ rather than in the kind of linguistic/textual clue they get signalled.
Attempts at modelling aspects of cohesion within rhetorical and/or stylistic
traditions are represented in ‘Rhetorical Structure Theory’ (see Mann & Thompson
1987). They represent further developments of aspects of classical rhetoric, and
quite often provide interfaces to functional theories of language (Matthiessen &
Thompson 1988; Taboada & Mann 2006). ‘Coherence’ within these approaches
usually means ‘coherence by inter-clausal logical/semantic relations’, regardless
of whether or not these are openly signalled grammatically and/or by cohesive
devices, although both types of signalling are acknowledged.
Modelling attempts within psychological (or processing) orientations come in
a range of varieties, such as ‘Centering Theory’ (Grosz, Joshi & Weinstein 1995).
They attempt to identify cognitive mechanisms of creating ‘coherence’ between
discourse segments, usually by the hearer, but also by the text producer. They spe-
cifically aim at modelling the combined function of linguistic information struc-
ture and syntax in triggering such coherence.
Linguistic orientations can be differentiated into grammar-based perspectives
and level-based perspectives.
A grammar-based perspective on cohesion/coherence starts from an account
of the grammar of a language and investigates the contribution of all lexico-
grammatical structures, such as pro-forms, ellipsis, conjunctions, lexical fields,
thematization and information structure, to the forming of text/discourse. It
also addresses configurations of linguistic structure at or just beyond the limits
of grammaticalization. All functionally-motivated linguistic frameworks include