Textual cohesion in modern standard Chinese

Abstract

Textual cohesion in Modern Standard Chinese (MSC) refers to a combination of discourse features and text features which cause a text to become connected in a non-random manner. Discourse features, the basis for relations of coreference and relations of structure, involve correspondence between the discourse world and the experiential world. Text features, the basis for relations of similarity, involve one of the structural characteristics of a text. Both of these features function to create a cohesive text. Relations of coreference maintain topic continuity, create dependencies of interpretation and portray participant interaction. Relations of structure reveal characteristics of referents, help in the relative interpretation of states-of-affairs, processes and events, mark semantic relations and provide interpretive, connective information. Relations of similarity create a stylistic “likeness” among successive parts of the text at grammatical, phonological and lexical levels. Though the cohesive function of these three types of relations is not language specific, the actual combination of discourse and text features tends to be realized through language specific characteristics of MSC.