210 Kerstin Kunz and Erich Steiner
It also seems (row 3) that cohesive reference does not impose constraints on
the grammatical functions of antecedent and cohesive item, nor does lexical cohe-
sion (cf. Halliday & Hasan 1976: 54):
(1) John has moved to a new house vs.
(2) John’s house is beautiful vs.
(3) That new house is John’s
can all be continued by
(4) He had it built last year
The agreement constraints which do obtain with reference are largely with respect
to number and gender. Yet, there is no restriction as to the grammatical role of
the antecedent although there may be certain preferences as noted by Grosz et al.
(1995). In addition, reference items may link with vague or ambiguous scope to
antecedents, as illustrated by Examples (5) and (6).
(5) ... international trade supports personal freedom. The market requires govern-
ments to set realistic rules, then stand back to let millions of individuals make
their own decision. This basic economic freedom... can become the thin end
of a wedge ... [EO_ESSAY]
(6) Countries with high taxes because they have failed to reform their public
finances would impose their lack of competitiveness on their neighbours. That
would be a disaster for Europe ... [EO_ESSAY]
Lexical cohesion operates on the linking of lexical items which may vary with
respect to morphological variants or parts of speech as well as syntactic position
or grammatical role:
(7) Recognizing the growing strains on energy systems as he took office, President
Bush sought to ... total U.S. energy consumption is projected to increase from
98 quadrillion British thermal units ... Because of slow growth in domestic
energy production ... the OPEC ... is expected to be the principal source of
marginal supply to meet increased oil demand ... [EO_ESSAY]
In cases of substitution, however, there seems to be a constraint imposing con-
stant grammatical functions between substitute and the item substituted (not to
be confused with the grammatical function of the entire phrase in which the item
occurs).^2- However, is it really the case that The old man has a new house vs. The old man’s house is nice
vs. That house is the home of the old man can only in the first case be continued by the other one
has none? The general point, especially in view of phenomena such as extended/text reference
over longer distances, is true.