Lecture 19 From sentence to Text

• Sentence and text

• the sentence: the highest rank of grammatical unit and also the basic linguistic unit constituting a text. A text: spoken or written, is a structurally cohesive and semantically coherent unit realized by a string of sentences for communicative purposes.

• 1.Sentence meaning and communicative function

• It is the context or situation that determines the communicative function of sentences.

• Every sentence has its meaning, which is closely related to, but can by no means be quoted with, its communicative function.

• In different contexts or situations, one and the same sentence may perform different communicative functions; in the meantime, one and the same communicative function may also be performed by different types of sentences.

• 2. Correctness and appropriacy

• Correctness is concerned with grammatical structure, while appropriacy with the question whether a sentence is used in the right place, eg:

• A: What’s your brother doing?

• B: ? He works in factory.

• B: ? He works in a factory.

• Appropriacy is determined by: register, by genre, by cultural norms, and above all by context or situation.

– 2.1 Textual connectors

• textual connectors: devices for cementing sentences into a text.

• three groups: logical, grammatical and lexical connectors.

• Logical connectors• 1.The few transitional words or expressions that indicate

the logical sequence between clauses or sentences. • 2. Make it easy for the reader to follow the movement of

thinking on the part of the writer, without which a text will be lacking in cohesion and coherence.

• Logical connectors are mostly conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs, eg: though, afterwards, later, then, finally, next, last, and, besides, furthermore, otherwise, moreover, likewise, etc.

• 2.2 Grammatical connectors

• Some grammatical devices can also be used to connect sentences: tense-aspect collocations, pronoun reference and comparative reference, substitution and ellipsis, as well as the use of parallel constructions.

2.3 Lexical connectors

• By lexical connectors we mean the repetition of key words, and the use of synonyms, near-synonyms and antonyms as cohesive ties.

– 3. Text building

The sentence: the basic linguistic unit of a text.

– 3.1 What is sentence group

– The sentence group: A meaningful unit composed of a group of sentences organize in an orderly sequence.

– the sentence group is a larger meaningful unit than the sentence, and it is a number of such meaningful units that constitute a text.

– sentence group vs. paragraph

1. A paragraph is normally a larger unit than a Sentence group.

2. the paragraph is not necessarily an indispensable part of a text, but the sentence group is, and a fully developed paragraph is itself a text.

• From sentence group to text

• As components of a text, sentence groups are organized in various ways. But whatever way a sentence group may be organized, it must focus on a central idea which is closely related to, not divorced from, the topic of the theme of the text.

4. Topic sentence (group) vs. supporting sentence (group)

• 4.1 Single- and multi- sentence group texts • 4.2 Topic sentence (group) and supporting sentence

(group)• topic sentence or sentence group: stating its central idea.• supporting sentences or supporting sentence groups:

the rest of the sentences or sentence groups centering around the topic sentence (group) to develop or expand the topic of the text.

• Position of the topic: the beginning of a text, but sometimes it may be delayed till the end.