Cohesive substitution in English and German 207
- English-German contrasts in cohesion: Focus on substitution
A preliminary comparison of systemic resources in English and German indicates
major differences in the areas of cohesive reference (see Kunz 2010; Kunz and
Steiner 2012), ellipsis and substitution, lexical cohesion, and conjunctive relations
(the latter not further addressed in this paper). Of these systemic resources, ellipsis
and substitution both involve substitution of some textual material, by zero in the
case of ellipsis, and by some highly general and semantically ‘bleached’ pro-forms
(see Halliday & Hasan 1976: 88ff; Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 534ff, 563ff ) in the
case of substitution. In our account below, we shall focus on the latter.
In a first step (Section 2.1), it will be assumed that the cohesive types of ref-
erence, substitution and lexical cohesion have distinct semantic properties and
different lexico-grammatical realization patterns along several dimensions, at
least in their prototypical occurrences. On the other hand, they shade into each
other semantically in their borderline areas. They change their preferred lexico-
grammatical realization patterns diachronically and depending on language and
even language variety (register). This discussion is followed by an overview of
systemic differences in substitution between English and German (Section 2.2).
Halliday & Hasan’s terminology will be used for a differentiation of distinct types
of substitution. It will be seen that both languages have fairly clear, though dif-
ferently structured, systems of ‘nominal substitution’. German has very limited
‘verbal’ and ‘clausal substitution’, and some devices are on the borderline between
substitution, reference and conjunction.
2.1 Conceptual clarification: Substitution and other cohesive devices
Which are the specific cohesive devices subsumed under substitution, and which
is their relationship to ellipsis, to reference and to lexical cohesion? A clarifica-
tion seems necessary because of the different conceptualizations highlighted in
Section 1.1 (see Steiner forthcoming for details).
The notion of substitution (and ellipsis) has to be systematically related to
and differentiated from (incrementally instantiated) ‘co-reference’, i.e. reference
to individuated and contextually updated/enriched discourse referents. The latter
must in turn be differentiated from ‘type-reference’ (‘co-classification’ as in Hasan
1985), i.e. reference to a class, rather than to individuals. Halliday and Hasan’s
(1976: 88ff ) substitution/ellipsis seems to have its close semantic relatives in ‘com-
parative reference’ and type reference on the one hand, and in lexical cohesion
through general words on the other (see also Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 569ff,
and from a different angle Martin 1992: 374f and Quirk et al. 1985: 863ff ). Lyons