Linguistics An Essential Introduction (Version 1.5)

The Wikipedia entry shown in Figure 10.1.1 at the beginning of this chapter makes up a unified whole in that it deals with a single topic (apple corers). This separates it from bits of writing on the same page that do not deal with this topic, such as the statement “This tool article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.” at the bottom of the white box, or the statement “This page was last edited on 29 October 2020, at 10:28 (UTC).” in the grey area at the bottom of the page.

The entry is also (relatively) logical and orderly, in that it presents the information about apple corers in a way that makes it easy to follow. As mentioned in Section 10.1, this is partially achieved by ordering the clauses in such a way that the information they contain builds on information provided previously: The first clause defines what an apple corer is by describing what it is used for, the second clause adds further uses. The third clause (lines 5–6) adds to our understanding of the device in question by describing its parts, and the fourth and fifth clause (lines 6–9) explain how these parts are useful in performing the function for which an apple corer is used.

This coherence can easily be destroyed by taking the first five clauses and arranging them in a random order, as in Example 2:

Although Text 2 contains exactly the same clauses as the corresponding lines in Text 1, it does not have coherence. This lack of coherence is not due to the lack of an overall topic — all clauses still deal with apple corers. It is also not due to missing information — the clauses provide the same information as in Text 1. Instead, it is due to the fact that the information is not presented in a systematic way, with the information presented in each individual clause building on the information presented in the preceding clauses.

In other words, coherence depends on the structure of the information provided in a stretch of language just as much as it depends on the nature of the information. The information structure is, in fact, encoded in the individual clauses in a very general way: New referents tend to be introduced in post-verbal positions (e.g. as direct objects or adverbials), while known referents tend to occur as the subject of a clause. In this way, known information occurs before new information, allowing Hearers (in written language, readers, but we continue to use Speaker and Hearer as we did in Section 9.1) to connect the new information to the old in a stepwise fashion.

Consider sentences (3) to (5) in Text 1: The first clause has the phrase some apple corers in subject position — this is known information, as apple corers have already been introduced in the preceding paragraph. It then adds new information by introducing the referents of the nouns handle and cutting device in object position. The referent of cutting device then becomes the subject of the clause it removes the core, with the object introducing the referent of core; the latter is not strictly speaking new, as apple cores have already been mentioned, but this last mention is further away than the last mention of the cutting device — when two referents are both known, the one that has been mentioned more recently (and is still active in the minds of Speaker and Hearer) is, in a sense, “more known” than the one mentioned less recently. This is also seen in the next clause, where the core occurs as the subject, while the apple corer, whose last mention is further away, occurs as an adverbial.

Information structure is a linguistic dimension in its own right, one that interacts with textual structure and with grammatical structure in various ways. The main point here was to show how it contributes to textual coherence.

CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. Written by Anatol Stefanowitsch