Cohesive substitution in English and German 211
Moving on to the question of the substitutability of the anaphoric form by
its antecedent (row 4), Halliday and Hasan (1976: 89) claim that this is often not
possible with reference, yet usually is so with substitution. Apparently though,
this constraint may largely hold in cases of extended/text reference. Repetition
of indefinite lexically headed phrases also allows disjoint reference, rather than
co-reference. The fact that replacement of the anaphor by its antecedent will usu-
ally yield a textually marked or stylistically dis-preferred formulation, however,
holds for both reference and substitution. For lexical cohesion, on the other hand,
replacement of an item in a chain by some earlier element in the chain will just
yield one type of lexical cohesion, repetition. There is not even a constraint on
repetition in the case of change of grammatical function or class, as can be seen in
the phenomenon of lexical cohesion between different lexical classes.
Row 5 discusses the conceptual nature of the relationship between antecedents
and following items (see also Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 570f ). In the case of
cohesive reference, the relationship between antecedent and cohesive item clearly
is one of (sometimes only partial) referential identity, even though this does not
rule out ambiguity and for some forms vagueness. Substitution, on the other hand,
involves a contrast in that the cohesive item is usually modified and thus refers to
a sub-class of the phenomenon referred to in the antecedent phrase. This is not
co-reference, but co-denotation or type-reference. Instantial reference is achieved
through referentially anchoring items in the nominal phrase of the substitute word
(articles, demonstratives, possessives etc.), not through the substitute head-word
as such. In other words, if we want to co-refer, we use referring pro-forms,^3 but if
we want to co-denote a distinguished sub-class of a class introduced elsewhere in
the discourse, or a designated different individual of a set, we can use substitution.
The relationship between members in a cohesive lexical chain is one of similarity
and involves any of the usual sense-relations. This should not obscure the fact
that because lexical items in their textual instantiation often occur in referen-
tially anchored, referring phrases, lexical chains will often interact with referential
chains, but in principle, the two phenomena are independent.
Row 6 addresses the more detailed nature of meaning relations between
members of the cohesive configuration. To start with, relations of co-reference
do not simply involve a binding together of some referent with its cohesive item
(anaphor). Rather, co-reference is established with an incrementally enriched and
updated referent. We give an illustration below in the form of a little fabricated
discourse:
- In some rare cases, personal pronouns establish a specific kind of type reference called
‘sloppy identity’.