A STUDY ON GRAMMATICAL MEANS AND PROSODIC MEANS AS COHENSIVE DEVICES IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

INTRODUCTION
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I. Rationale
Linguistics has become a big scientific area and thanks to many linguists, there have
been a lot of studies, researches, books, article, etc about linguistics. In the past, linguistics
and language studying have mostly examined in terms of phonological, lexical and syntactic
features and sentences which are preferably taken out of the context. Then the theory of
Chomsky of the power of linguistics and some other researches born and have gradually
changed the previous views. Nowadays, linguistics has been studied “in their full textual,
social and psychological context” (Cook: 1989: ix). It means that language now is studied
comprehensively how people communicate successfully, what parameters help them to take
language into communication or in other word discourse, “the language in use for
communication” (Cook. 1989). Discourse has been approached by many linguists as
Halliday, M.A.K (1985), Crytal, D (1992), Coulthard, M. (1985), Moore, J. et al. (1980),
Reichman, R (1985), etc. They have contributed a lot on the theory of discourse. In
Vietnam, we have Assoc. Prof. Dr Nguyen Hoa, Assoc. Prof. Dr Vo Dai Quang, Dr. Hoang
Van Van, Dr. Tran Ngoc Them. And there are some other studies on discourse as Bui, N. A.
(2003), Dam, T.H. (2007), etc.
Cohesion is an important factor of discourse which has attracted a lot of attention of
linguists. The most significant research on cohesion is “Cohesion in English” by Halliday
and Hasan (1976). In which, grammatical items are analyzed in terms of the way they link
sentences together. Besides that, Halliday and Hasan (1976) also give “a brief discussion of
the cohesive function of intonation”. And Coulthard, M. (2001) also introduces the
significance of intonation in discourse. These researches theoretically discuss how
grammatical means and intonation can relate meanings within one sentence or within
sentences to make them coherent. Moreover, they also get the practical value that help
language user to apply these theories into everyday communication to gain the best result.
People who can use grammatical and intonation as effective means of cohesion, can easier
get successful in communication.
Doing this thesis, I wish to understand more about cohesion as well as to improve

my ability to use language as an effective mean of communication but understanding about
cohesion is not an easy task to do. In this thesis, I examine here the four types of
grammatical cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction in terms of their
cohesive function. And intonation is an important factor in creating cohesion that can’t be
ignored. It is impossible to say that the thesis can cover all factors relating to grammatical
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means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative discourse but I do hope that it can
benefit something for the readers.
II. Aims and objectives of the study
The aims of the study are to explore the grammatical and prosodic means as
cohesive devices in narrative discourse. Specifically, the thesis is targeted at the following
objectives:
• How reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction function as cohesive
devices in narrative discourse.
• How prosodic means in general and intonation in particular become cohesive
devices in narrative discourse
III. Scope of the study
As far as I mentioned before that cohesion in discourse is such a broad category that
it is very difficult to cover every aspect so what I focus on here is cohesion in narrative
discourse by analyzing grammatical means and intonation as cohesive devices in narrative
discourse in general and the film “The Perfect Man” in particular.
IV. Methodology
The major research method of the dissertation is inductive which uses particular
facts and examples to form general rules and principles. In this study, the particular
examples from which the general rules and principles are formed, are resulted from the film
“The Perfect Man” on HBO . Besides that, analytic method is also used as a minor method
to analyze the examples of the film. Moreover, the major technique of the study is
description supported by systemization as a minor.
V. Structure of the study
The study consists of three main parts

* Introduction: introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope, method and structure of the
study
* Development: this part consists of three chapters:
Chapter I: theoretical background: provides overview of discourse, narrative
discourse, cohesion and intonation in English
Chapter II: Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse
Chapter III: Intonation as a mean of cohesive device in narrative discourse
* Conclusion: give some summary of concluding remarks of the thesis and suggestions for
further researches.
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DEVELOPMENT
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CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND
LITERATURE REVIEW
I. Literature review
The concept of discourse has been discussed for a long time and linguists have given
various definitions. Halliday (1985:318) defined “discourse is a multidimentional process”
whereas Cook defines “discourse is stretches of language perceived to be meaningful,
unified and purposeful”. Sharing the same idea with Cook, Crystal (1992: 25) states
“discourse is a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence,
often constituting a cohesive unit such as a sermon, an argument, a joke or a narrative”.
Besides that, Widdowson defines “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of
communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a
rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of
communication”.
Besides that, there exist a number of other definitions of discourse which illustrate
the perspectives of discourse from different aspects. Hatim and Mason (1990) define
discourse is “a matter of expression of attitude” and is “a mode of speaking and writing
which involve the participants in adopting a particular on certain area of socio-cultural
activity: racial discourse, scientific discourse, domestic discourse”.

Other linguists who study discourse as Coulthard, M., Nunan, D., Coulthard, M.,
Montgomery, M., Moore, Reichman, R., etc. Vietnamese have also studied discourse as
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Hoa with “An Introduction to Discourse Analysis” or Nguyen Thi
Viet Thanh with “He thong lien ket loi noi tieng Viet”. In addition to that, there are some
other studies on discourse of Nguyen Trong Du (2003), Bui Nguyet Anh (2003), Nguyen
Thi Bich Lien (2004), Dam Thanh Hang (2004), etc. These studies have contributed a lot to
the development of linguistics and language users benefit much from them.
II . Discourse
I.1 What is discourse?
To answer the question, linguists have different ways of understanding and defining
discourse. Tradition linguists have concentrated on phonological, lexical and syntactical
features which are considered the basic of foreign language knowledge. Today’s view,
however, consider language as a synthetic phenomenon. In other words, in the study of
language, one should take into account a good number of social, cultural, and situational
factors that are assumed to affect language use and its features. Stretches of language can
only be obtained if they are considered “in their full textual, social, psychological context”
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(Cook. 1989). The concept of discourse is still discussed, but basically, it may be defined as
“the language in use for communication” (Cook. 1989).
In “Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics”, discourse is
defined as a general term for examples of language use, i.e. language which has been
produced as the result of an act of communication. Whereas grammar refers to the rules a
language uses to form grammatical units such as clause, phrase and sentence, discourse
refers to larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews.
And according to Widdowson (1979: 98) “discourse is a use of sentences to perform
acts of communication which cohere in larger communicative unit, ultimately establishing a
rhetorical pattern which characterizes the piece of language as a whole as a kind of
communication”. As far as the scope of discourse is concerned, discourse not only to
spoken interactions, interviews but also to written and printed words such as newspapers,
articles, letters, stories, recipes, instructions, etc. (Carthy: 1993).

Thus, the majority of linguists seem to share a common view when defining the
concept of discourse. Their definitions, though expressed in different ways, all emphasize
the two most important aspects of discourse:
• The structure of discourse: discourse is a well-form of organization above the level
of sentence.
• The function of discourse: discourse servers as a mean of communication
I.2 Discourse and text
A distinction is usually made between the word “text” and “discourse”, however, so
far, there have been many ways of viewing the term. For some linguists, these two terms
seem to be used almost interchangeably. Text is defined as a piece of spoken or written
language. A text maybe considered from the point of view of its structure and/or its
functions (Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics). It is
impossible to fully understand a text without reference to the context in which it occurs. A
text consists of one word or it may be of considerable length (Swales 1987: 13). Actually,
text structure reveals in linguistic terms what is generally considered to be extralinguistic,
that is, this “public function” (for an example of press news, see Garrido 1998c). Mann,
Matthiesen and Thompson (1992: 41) posit three different levels of structure: “holistic” or
text structure, “relational” structure (where rhetorical relations obtain) and “syntactic”
structure, or sentence structure. Instead of this three-layer structure, there is only a
hierarchical one, from text to discourse, from discourse to sentence, or, rather, from
sentence structure to discourse structure, and from discourse structure to text structure.
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Sentences are linked in sequences which may be called ‘discourses’ and then
organized into larger structures, up to texts. And texts are not defined in terms of coherence
or relevance but by the connection existing between their component discourses. Similarly,
a discourse is not defined in terms of contextual information, but it is the result of
connecting its component sentences. In order for this connection to take place, additional
information must be included. This happens whenever a unit is connected to others.
Frequently this additional information is added as default, but it may also originate in
preceding units. Thus words are linked to each other into phrases, phrases into clauses,

clauses into sentences, sentences into discourses, and discourses into texts.
Halliday, for example, use “text” refers to “discourse”: he sees a text as a “semantic
unit” characterized by cohesion. Some other linguists tend to avoid using the term
“discourse” and “text” altogether, preferring “text” for all record instances of language in
use.
Other linguists, on the other hand, clarify the difference between “text” and
“discourse”. They argue that discourse is language in action, while text is the written record
of that interaction. Crystal (1992: 72), for example, proposed that discourse is “continuous
stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence”, whereas text is “a piece of
naturally occurring of spoken, written or signed discourse identified for the purposed of
analysis”. And according to Guy Cook (1994: 74), ‘a text’ means “the linguistic forms in a
stretch of language and those interpretations of them which do not vary with context. I use
the general term ‘text’ to mean language regarded in this way.” He also said that text is
dependent on its receiver, and therefore variable. Nevertheless, he believes the term is
sufficient constant to be used on the sense defined above. Brown and Yule (1983:3), cited
in Nunan (1993: 6), also argue that text is “the representation of discourse and the verbal
record of a communication act”.
In other words, there is a disagreement about the meanings in the terms “discourse”
and “text”. All, however, seem to agree that both text and discourse need to be defined in
terms of “meaning” and that coherent text/ piece of discourse are those that form a
meaningful whole. To make it easy, discourse is a general term to refer to all the act of
verbal communication, whereas text is simply a verbal record of the whole communicative
process (that is discourse) in which many situational factors are involved, it can be both
written and spoken, and there is no limit to the size of the text. Thus text is purely
linguistics, formal object while discourse has both linguistic and non-linguistic property.
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I. 3 Narrative discourse
As far as concerned, a narrative discourse is a discourse that is an account of events,
usually in the past, that employs verbs of speech, motion, and action to describe a series of
events that are dependent one on another, and that typically focuses on one or more

performers of actions.
A narrative is a text, composed in any medium, which describes a sequence of real
or unreal events. It is common to make a primary distinction between two basic components
of narrative: narrative plot and narrative discourse. The term plot is generally understood to
refer to the abstract storyline of a narrative; that is, to the sequence of elementical,
chronologically ordered events which create the ‘inner core’ of a narrative. Narrative
discourse, by contrast, encompasses the manner or means by which that plot is narrated.
Narrative discourse, for example, is often characterised by the use of stylistic devices such
as flashback, prevision and repetition-all of which serve to disrupt the basic chronology of
the narrative’s plot. Thus, narrative discourse represents the realised text, the
understandable and noticable piece of language which is produced by a story-teller in a
given interactive context.
In a narrative, something happens, such that we seen a “before” by another state of
affairs and this later is, ideally, not merely temporally but casually related to the formal
state. Narratives are most commonly narrated in words, in speech (as in oral literature and
jokes) or (chiefly) in writing; but they can be enacted dramatically on stage, or visualized in
the imagines of film and gesture of mimime”.
Narrative is distinguished from the description- a telling of the ways things are. It is
also distinguished from much expository writing and expression of opinion which are often
explanations of the way things are, or an argument for the way we believe things should be.
So what makes a difference between a narrative and other types of discourse is the fact that
a narrative is a text in which something humanly interesting has happened, or a significant
change in the situation has occurred.
Narrative can be told, and, in some cases, do not require verbal language (as in the
way of mimime); thus, narrative form is medium-independent. Like any kind of formal
organization, narrative form is able to exploit the particular characteristics of the media
similarly verbal narrative will exploit the characteristics of language.
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II. Cohesion in English
II.1 What is cohesion?

Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships of persons and
events; there is not any language that may these patterns be ignored, if the translation is to
be understood by its readers (Callow.1974:30). The topic of cohesion has always appeared
to be the most useful constituent of discourse analysis or text linguistics applicable to
translation. (Newmark.1987:295). Halliday and Hasan’s Cohesion in English (1976) define
cohesion “is a semantic one; it refers to relation of meaning that exist within the text, and
that define it as a text” Cohesion connects a string of sentences to form a text rather than a
series of unrelated statements.
Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link
various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, for
instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other
words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface
relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear.
Cohesion may be defined as the formal linguistic realization of semantic and pragmatic
relations between clauses and sentences in a text (Quirk et al. 1985: 1423 cited in Guy
Cook. 1994: 29)
Cohesion, as contrasted with register, is not concerned with what a text means.
Rather, it refers to a set of meaning relations that exist within the text (Halliday and Hasan.
1976). These relations are not of the kinds that link the components of a sentence and they
differ from sentential structure. The discovery of these meaning relations is crucial to its
interpretation. For instance, in the following text:
Mary bought a new pencil. She put it in her drawer.
The interpretation of the elements she and it depends on the lexical items Mary and
Pencil. So, cohesion is in the semantic relation that is setup between these elements.
According to Halliday and Hasan, the function of cohesion is to relate one part of a
text to another part of the same text. Cohesion is the quality of well-formed discourses
(texts) that gives them an internal unity, making them "hang together." Sentences flow
smoothly from one to another within that discourse. He also assumes that there are
appropriate interpropositional relations marked, either explicitly or implicitly. There is a
unity of vocabulary. Pronominalization natural to the language enables the reader to know

that he is reading about the same participant (topic) introduced earlier in that discourse.
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Halliday and Hasan were two linguists who published good studies of cohesion within
English discourse. Every language has its own cohesion strategies.
According to Halliday and Hasan, there are five types of cohesive devices in English
and in the lexicogrammatical system of the language. They are reference, substitution,
ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference, substitution, and ellipsis are
grammatical; lexical cohesion is lexical; conjunction stands on the border line between the
two categories.
II. 2. Cohesion versus coherence
In history of linguistics study, there have been some of the disagreement stems from
diverse views of what cohesion is and how it differs from coherence. Coherence refers to
the ways in which the parts of a piece of writing are linked together to form a whole which
is often confused with cohesion. While cohesion links among sentences and within them,
coherence is the broader characteristic of unity of the text as a whole. According to
Richards et. al. (1992:62), “cohesion is the grammatical and or lexical relationships between
the different elements of a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or
between different parts of a sentence”. And coherence is “the relationships which link the
meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text” (Richards et.
al.1992:62).
Cohesion is only one component of coherence. In addition to cohesion, at least one
other factor must be present for a text to have coherence; that factor is organization. Other
factors like situational consistency add coherence to text Cohesion exists within text and
adds to the coherence of text. It may be useful to think of coherence as something the reader
establishes-or hopes to establish-in the process of reading connected discourse coherence
is both a text-related and a reader-related phenomenon.
Larson, who provides a fine summary of major studies on cohesion in composition
research agrees with this definition and goes on to say, “The determination of coherence is
fundamentally an interpretation by a reader. It is part of a transaction between text and
reader, between the reader’s world and the writer’s language”. Coherence comes from

cohesion and redundancy. Both come from the writer’s language, cohesion specifically
from the ties the writer builds in, while redundancy comes from both the writer’s language
and the “reader’s world” in a particular linguistic and psycholinguistic sense. For example:
“IBM is the leading company in electronics. Thus working for it would be a great
chance for any expert of the field”.
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It is obvious that there is a link between “IBM” and “it”. This makes the exchange
understandable. For example:
A- Are you applying for a job in that foreign company?
B- My English is not good enough.
Obviously, there is no grammatical or lexical link between A’s question and B’s
reply, but the exchange is felt to be coherent because we understand the reason why he can’t
apply for a job in that company. Therefore cohesion is only a guide to coherence, and it is
mainly used to embody coherence by means of grammatical and lexical cohesive devices.
However, according to Guy Cook (1994:32), some other linguists (Brown and Yule
1983:191-9; de Beaugrande and Dressker 1981: 48-111) regard the two as distinct, seeing
cohesion as an element of text explicable in terms of formal linguistics, and coherence as a
result of the interaction of text and receiver, which, though it may be aided by cohesion, is
distinct and independent from it. It is true that, in principle, cohesion is neither necessary
nor sufficient to create coherence but in practice a discourse employ it. Most coherent text
are also cohesive but it does not mean that cohesion create coherence. For example:
Becca: Holly, you’ve gotta open up
Holly: I’m not so sure about this
It can be seen that this extract “text” is cohesive but not coherent without some
specific knowledge on the part of the receiver (Brandsford and Johnson 1973). And
conversely, there are short discourse, especially conversational interchanges, which can be
perceived as coherent, given the necessary contextual or cultural knowledge, but not
cohesive. For example:
Becca: You look awesome. Turn
Holly: I cannot believe that you talked me into going to the dance

Becca: I thought you said you’ve been to like a million schools.
Cohesion is a manifestation of certain aspects of coherence, and a pointer towards it,
rather than its cause or necessary result. Cohesion is never more than a partial textual
realization of coherence (which is a feature of the perception of text rather than of text
itself). Even in texts with a density of cohesive ties, many links of co-reference, cause,
sequence, and logic, though recoverable by the readers or the listeners, remain unstated and
have no textual manifestation whatsoever. Though an increase in cohesion may, up to a
certain point, make a text clearer, less ambiguous, and more coherent, there is a point
beyond which it may make it duller and less readily processible. This is, for example,
particularly evident in legal text.
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II. 3. Cohesion and discourse
It will be clear from what have been said above is that cohesion is not just another
name for discourse structure. Discourse structure is, as its name, a type of structure. The
name is used to refer to the structure of some postulated unit higher than the sentence, for
example the paragraph, or some larger entity such as episode or topic unit.
The concept of cohesion is set up to account for relations in discourse, but in rather a
different way, without the implication there is some structural unit that is above the
sentence. Cohesion refers to the range of possibilities that exist for linking something with
what has gone before. Since this linking is achieved through relations in meaning (we are
excluding from consideration the effect of formal devices such as syntactic parallelism,
metre and rhyme), what is in question is the set of meaning relations which function in this
way: the semantic resources which are drawn on for the purpose of creating text. And since,
as we have stressed, it is the sentence that is the pivotal entity here – whatever is put
together within one sentence is part of a text – we can interpret cohesion, in practice, as the
set of semantic resources for linking a sentence with what have gone before. From the
standpoints of Haliday and Hasan “the primary determinant of whether a set of sentences do
or do not constitute a text depends on cohesive relationship within and between the
sentences. For example:
“Immediately after my leaving college, a well-known auditing firm in London

employed me. Along with it I was doing accounting work of a commercial firm”.
It is clear that “it” in the second sentence refers back to the first sentence. The
relation between them creates cohesion. The function of “it” creates cohesive linking
between the two sentences; the two sentences together constitute a text. By using cohesive
devices we can choose to repeat, to refer back or forward, or to substitute words or phrases
… As Brown and Yules (1987) explained, cohesive relationships can be formally
established within a text, providing cohesive “tie” which blind a text together.
II. 4. Cohesive devices
Halliday and Hasan recognize five types of cohesive devices in English and in the
lexicogrammatical system of the language. They are reference, substitution, ellipsis,
conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference, substitution, and ellipsis are grammatical;
lexical cohesion is lexical; conjunction stands on the border line between the two
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categories. In other words, it is mainly grammatical but sometimes involves lexical
selection.
As cohesion is expressed through grammar and vocabulary, it has been classified
into two kinds: grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion which work closely to create a
text. In this part I would like to make brief definition of the terms relation to them. The
following diagram above summaries what grammatical and lexical cohesion consist of to
give a brief understand about cohesion
Cohesion
Grammatical Lexical
Reference Substitution Ellipsis Conjunction Reiteration Collocation
II. 4.1. Lexical cohesion
Cohesion is maintained by not only grammatical cohesion but also lexical cohesion
to hold texts together. According to Haliday and Hasan’s description of lexical cohesion
(1976), related vocabulary items which occur across clause and sentence in written texts
and in speech are major characteristic of coherent discourse. The relation between
vocabulary items in texts described by the Haliday – Hasan model are of two principal
kinds: reiteration and collocation.

• Reiteration:
The major relation between vocabulary items in texts is reiteration. It can be seen as
either restarting a word in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or by reasserting
its meaning by exploiting such lexical relations as synonyms, antonyms and superordinate.
For example:
The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
“Don’t they smell beautiful!”
Her mother gave a short laugh.
‘No’, she said, ‘not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and’
chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk,
he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole.
• Collocation:
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By Richards et. al. (1992:62) “collocation refers to the restrictions of how words can
be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which
verbs and nouns are used together”.
For example we always say “do business” and “make a profit”, not “make business”
and “do a profit”. Thus, here “make” collocates with “a profit”, and “do” collocate with
“business”.
II.4.2. Grammatical cohesion
Grammatical cohesion can be defined as the surface marking in written discourse,
and between utterances and turns in speech. These links can be grouped into 4 types:
reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction.
II.4.2.1 Reference:
Reference is a mechanism that relates one element of the text to another one for its
interpretation, which can be present or not (endophoric and exophoric reference). Reference
is a semantic relation. According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics “reference in its wider sense would be the relationship between a word
or phrase and an entity in the external world” and “reference in its narrower sense is the
relationship between a word or phrase and a specific object” These two explanations are

respectively equivalent to how reference hangs the text together exophoric and endophoric.
When there is no previous mention of the referent in the text, we call it exophoric reference,
dependent on the context outside the text for its meaning while endophoric is a term that
means an expression refers to something in the same text. There are two types of
endophora: anaphora and cataphora. Anaphora links the language back to something that
went before in the preceding text. The other, cataphora, is the opposite – link forward to a
referent in the text that follow.
According to Halliday and Hasan, there are different types of reference that is
classified on the criterion of reference potential without regard to the endophoric/exophoric
distinction: personal, demonstrative and comparison.
II.4.2.2 Ellipsis:
By Richards et. al. (1992) “ellipsis is the omission of elements normally required by
the grammar which the speaker writer assumes are obvious from the context and therefore
need not be raised”. Ellipsis has broadly 3 types, which are nominal, verbal and clausal
ellipsis which is similar to substitution. Nominal ellipsis means ellipsis within the nominal
group is omitted and one of the other elements will take the function of the Head. Verbal
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ellipsis means ellipsis within the verbal group and clausal ellipsis usually occurs in yes-no
question.
Halliday and Hasan (1976:142) confirmed that although substitution and ellipsis
embody the same fundamental relation between parts of a text (a relation between words or
groups or clauses), they are two different kinds of structural mechanism, and hence show
rather different patterns. Ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a sentence or
clause and can only be recovered by referring to an element from a sentence or clause and
can only be recovered by referring to an element in the preceding text. Therefore, ellipsis, is
normally an anaphoric relation. In brief, ellipsis can be regarded as substitution by zero.
II.4.2.3 Substitution:
Substitution can be defined as the replacement of one item by another. Substitution
is a grammatical relation - a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning. According
to Halliday and Hasan (1976), substitution is “a relation on the lexico-grammatical level,

the level of grammar and vocabulary, or linguistic form”. Substitution is used to avoid
repeating information that is known to the hearer. Unlike ellipsis which leaves a structural
slot empty, substitution replaces it by a filler word. There are three types of substitution:
nominal, verbal and clausal one. Most of the substitutes are pro-forms within sentences,
which are used across sentences. In specific words, substitutes may be pro-forms for
adverbials, pro-forms for predicate and predication, and also pro-forms for the direct object
clause. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 91), nominal substitution includes “one”,
“ones”, “same”: verbal substitution consists of “do” and clausal substitutes are “so”, “not”.
II.4.2.4 Conjunction
Conjunction is another type of cohesive relation in the grammar. Conjunction, in
nature, is rather different from the other cohesive relations, form both reference, on the one
hand, and substitution and ellipsis, on the other. It does not function to remind the reader of
previously mentioned entities, actions and state of affairs. In other words, it is not what
linguists call an anaphoric relation. Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves,
but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings. They serve as cohesive devices because
they signal relationships that can only be fully understood through reference to other parts
of the text.
As grammatical items, Cook (1989:21) defined: “Conjunctions are words or phrases
which explicitly draw attention to the type of relationship between one sentence and clause
and another”. There are four types of conjunctions: temporal, causal, additive and
adversative. Following are some examples of conjunctive relations:
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Additive: and, and also, or, furthermore, in addition, besides, alternatively,
incidentally, by the way, that is, I mean, in other words, etc.
Adversative: yet, though, only, however, nevertheless, despite this, in fact, actually,
however, on the other hand, at the same time, etc
Causal: so, hence, therefore, consequently, for this reason, account for this,
as a result, for, because, otherwise, etc
Temporal: then, next, after that, just then, at the same time, finally, at last, soon,
meantime, until then, etc

III. Intonation in English
III.1 Definition
Intonation is the different pitch of voice. It is the rising or falling pitch of the voice
when somebody says a word or a syllable or the rising or falling pattern of speech generally.
It is also a manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard of accuracy of
pitch and the use of changing pitch convey syntactic information. “Intonation is a part and
parcel of the English language, as it is for any language of the world. Intonation is
inevitable whenever a language is spoken; it is important, because we eventually realize that
it carries meaning and will often be the most important part of a message” (Tench, P.
1996:2). In other word, it isn’t what people say but how they say it.
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. All languages use
intonation to express emphasis, contrast, emotion, or other such nuances, but not every
language uses tone to distinguish lexical meaning. When this occurs, tones are phonemes
(discrete speech sounds), just like consonants and vowels, and they are occasionally
referred to as tonemes.
A tone may be defined as a feature of a syllable which makes it stand out because its
pitch value contrasts with its surroundings, in very many cases by initiating a movement in
a new pitch direction. Its normal function is to accent a word. The more work one does with
tones the more inconvenient it becomes to use phrasal definitions (such as "a fall from a
mid to a low pitch") to identify them.
Pitch is the essence of intonation and it distinct intonation from paralanguage.
Paralanguage involves not only pitch, but also volume, tempo and voice quality, indeed all
the vocal effects that are available within a given language community. The effects like
gigging, sobbing, tut-tut ting, husky voice, speaking through the teeth, etc. whereas
intonation itself is confined to the use of pitch alone. We use the word pitch to describe the
high or low sound of the voice. It does not refer to loud, soft, fast or slow. Every individual
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has a level of pitch which is normal, and which we can recognize as his/ her middle pitch
level. He/she can change it to make the voice high or low in relation to this middle level.
To sum up, intonation refers to the rise and the fall of the pitch of the voice in

spoken language. Intonation is inevitable whenever a language is spoken. It varies from
languages to languages, even regions to regions in English. When you say something you
can not say without some kind of intonation, even a monotone can be classed as a kind of
intonation. Intonation is integral in speech.
III.2 Tone vs intonation
III.2.1 Parameters
Intonation is the linguistic use of pitch in utterance. Every language has its own
melody, no language is spoken on the same musical notes at all the time. The voice goes up
and down and the different notes of the voice combine to make tones. Tone that is the
sound, especially with reference to its pitch quality, strength, pitch aspect of a syllable while
intonation is the high or low, up or down of pitch in syntactic level. The pitch of voice
expressing in tone is only happened in a syllable so tone belongs to syllable and it has the
distinctive function. When the utterance is a syllable one, tone becomes intonation. Tone
does not usually express meaning which is only a phonological factor that distinct the
meaning while intonation expresses meanings.
In many languages, of which English is one, the tone belongs not to the word but to
the word group. We can say a group of word definitely or we can say it hesitantly, angrily
or kindly; we can say it with interest or without interest, and these differences are largely
made by the tones we use. In other words, the words don’t change their meaning but the
tone adds something to the words and what it adds is the speaker’s feelings at that moment.
This way of using tones is called intonation. Crystal (1969) identifies four basic tones (fall,
rise-fall, rise, and fail-rise) while O'Connor and Arnold (1973) distinguish only two (rise
and fall). Brazil et al. (1980) endorses five tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level)
whereas Cruttenden (1986) recognizes seven tones (high-fall, low-fall, high-rise, low-rise,
fail-rise, rise-fall, and mid-level).
A tone unit is an utterance or part of an utterance which contains a single tone and,
therefore, one tonic syllable. A speaker begins the pitch movement we have called tone on
prominent syllable. This syllable is then called tonic syllable and is indicated in the
transcriptions by the use of small capital letters and underlining. What makes a tone a rising
or falling or any other type of tone is the direction of the pitch movement on the last

stressed (tonic) syllable (Brown, 1977:45). If the tonic syllable is in non-final position, the
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glide continues over the rest of the syllables. A fall in pitch on the tonic syllable renders the
tone as 'fall'. A 'rise' tone is one in which the tonic syllable is the start of an upward glide of
pitch. This glide is of two kinds; if the upward movement is higher, then it is 'high rise'; if it
is lower, then it is 'low rise'. 'Fall-rise' has first a pitch fall and then a rise.
Systematically, English intonation consists of: tonality, tonicity and tone. Tonality is
the system by which a stretch of spoken text is segmented into a series of intonation which
correspond to the speaker’s perception of “pieces” of information. It is also subject to a
system. If you change the number of intonation units (tonality), you change the number of
pieces of information. Tonicity is the system by which an individual, discrete unit of
intonation is shown to have a prominent word which indicates the focus of information. If
you change the prominent word, you change the focus of information, and thus create a
different meaning. Tone is the system of contrasting pitch movements in each unit of
intonation, which, among other roles, identifies the status of the information: e.g, major,
minor or incomplete.
III.2.2 Functions
III.2.2.1 Some basic functions of intonation
According to J.D. O’Connor and G.F. Arnold (1973), intonation has three roles.
Firstly, it has the function of division of longer utterance into grammatically relevant word
groups. Secondly, intonation is the use of different tunes, different patterns of pitch, for
grammatical purposes. And apart from these two grammatical roles, there is also a third and
very important one, that of expressing the speaker’s attitude, at the moment of speaking, to
the situation in which he is placed. Besides that Paul Tench (1996:16) introduces six
functions of intonation: the organization of information, the realization of communicative
functions, the expression of attitude, syntactic structure, textual structure and the
identification of speech styles.
Moreover, in Ng÷ ®iÖu tiÕng Anh ë ngêi ViÖt (2006: 63), Nguyen Huy Ky introduces
6 functions of intonation that I want to mention here: grammatical function, attitudinal
function, accentual function, discourse function, distinctive function and pragmatic

function.
• Grammatical function: Intonation can distinct between statement utterance, question,
exclamation, additional utterance and ordering / request utterance.
• Attitudinal function: Intonation is used as a mean to express the speaker’s feelings,
attitudes (happy, sad, glad, angry, worry, etc.). In combination with grammatical
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function, one utterance can express different attitudes, feelings of the speakers in
different situations.
• Accentual function: This function helps the speaker to create the effect of sound in any
stressed or unstressed syllable in any utterance. Accentual emphasizing in these
situations are causing by tempo to express the informed information in each intonation
unit.
• Discourse function: Intonation helps speakers and hearers to achieve what is called
“new information” (unknown information) or “old information” (already known
information) in an intonation unit.
• Distinctive function: Intonation plays this function to make the utterance express
different stretches of meaning in different situations. Same grammatical structure can
express different meanings by mean of intonation.
In summary, intonation functions grammatically, phonetically and communicatively.
It used all means of grammar and phonetic to express speakers’ feelings, attitudes, purposes
to achieve communicative value.
III.2.2.2 Some communicative functions of tone
Traditionally, the description on the intonation of communicative functions is
associated with the glide down, glide up, take off and dive.
A falling tone is by far the most common used tone of all. It signals a sense of
finality, completion, belief in the content of the utterance, and so on. A speaker, by
choosing a falling tone, also indicates to the addressee that that is all he has to say, and
offers a chance (turn-taking) to the addressee to comment on, agree or disagree with, or add
to his utterance. It is usually used with statements, wh-questions, commands, exclamations.
On the other hand, the glide up is used in genuine 'Yes/No' questions where the

speaker is sure that he does not know the answer, and that the addressee knows the answer.
In statement, the glide- up is you when the speaker intent to be soothing or encouraging to
form the statement as a question or to show the interest except the short questions used as
responses. Tag questions have either a fall or rise depending on the speaker’s sense of
certainty or uncertainty.
The third tone, the take-off is usually used as a grumble statement or when you want
someone to repeat something. This tone is also used with a rise at the end of an invitation or
request or in tag questions when both clauses are negative or speaker wants to find the
agreement as well as in an exclamation to question the speaker.
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The Dive mostly be used in statement if the statement is not complete but leading to
a following word-group or for the statement which show reservations on the part of the
speaker. When you warn to correct someone or to warn somebody, you can use Dive.
Surprisingly, that the Dive is rarely used in questions but it can be use in commands when
you want the command to sound pleading, more a request than an order, the Dive is used.
However, there are many more communicative functions than those just listed. The
traditional list is based on the types of clauses recognized by grammarians. In fact, there is
no one-to-one correspondence between clause type and communicative function as just
presented. Also, there is no special tone for each separate communicative function; the
resources of intonation are simply not sufficient for so many different functions.
To sum up, we have seen that in addition to the role of information organization, the
tone system has a role in expressing the speaker’s choice of types of interaction with the
addressee, in other words, communicative functions.
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Chapter II: GRAMMATICAL MEANS AS A COHESIVE DEVICE
IN NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
I. Introduction
Grammatical means of cohesion are crucial to make a text comprehensible in
general and in narrative discourse as particular. In this chapter, I would like to investigate
the use of grammatical cohesion in narrative discourse by analyzing the use of reference,

substitution, ellipsis and conjunctions in a film name “The perfect man”. This film is about
a teenager girl, Holly, whose life is different from other girls. She lives with her mother,
Jean-a baker and her younger sister, Zoe. Her mother always shows her wish to find a man
for her and she moves from this place to another one whenever her heart broken so their
family travel a lot and they don’t live long in one place. This make the girl get into many
troubles. She regularly has to get familiar with new places of living, new schools, new
friends, etc and when she just gets used to with that, she has to go on moving. Thus, she
decides to find a perfect man for her mother so she can live stably in one place. When they
moved to Blooklin, Holly has a friend called Amy whose uncle becomes the model for
Holly to build the perfect man for her mother. She creates a perfect man basing on the
talking with Amy’s uncle, Ben. Holly acts as the perfect man Ben that she created sending
her mother flowers, messages, emails. However, things didn’t happen as what she intended
but finally everything is perfect as she wished. The film is about how Holly finds the perfect
man for her mother and how she overcomes and get through her troubles when she has to
change a lot of living places, schools and friends as well as how Holly and her mother
understand each other and become good friends. This is a three-hour long film so I just try
to find and analyze some typical examples of grammatical cohesion that are used in the
film.
II. Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse
II.1 Reference
Reference items are forms which make reference to something else for their
interpretation, instead of being interpreted semantically in their own right. If their
interpretation lies outside the text, the relationship is said to be an exophoric one. The
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references which look back in the text for their interpretation are called anaphoric and those
which look forward in the text for their interpretation are cataphoric relationships
(McCarthy,1990). According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), only endophoric reference is
cohesive. Exophoric reference contributes to the creation of text, in that it links the
language with the context of situation, but it doesn’t contribute to the integration of one
passage with another so that the two together form part of the same text hence it does not

contribute directly to cohesion as we have defined it. And in term of referent potential,
there are three types of reference, personal, demonstrative, and comparative are presented
by Halliday & Hasan(1976):
II.1.1 Personal reference:
Personal reference items are expressed by means of pronouns and determiners. They
refer to individuals and objects that are named some other point in the text. Personal
reference includes three classes: personal pronouns, possessive adjectives and possessive
pronouns. We can find all of these in the words of the film. Let’s see a situation in which
Holly is with her friend Becca. Holly is trying a dress that she’s going to wear at the dance
…Becca: come on, open the door, tough guy.
Holly: Okay.
Becca: You look awesome. Turn
Holly: I cannot believe that you talked me into going to the dance
It is able to see that “you” and “guy” here refer anaphorically to Holly. Without the
reference here we cannot connect the sentence together to a complete conversation. But, it
is noticeable that “you” in the sentence Holly “I cannot believe that you talked me into
going to the dance” does not refer back to Holly but to Becca. Now, let’s continue the
conversation:
“It is a simple matter of self-preservation. I mean, when you move around a lot,
you just don’t let yourself get attached. Much less make plans to go to school
dances”
Remembering that her mother travels a lot and they don’t live in one place so Holly
has never had a chance to take part in any school dance. In the above sentence, “you” refers
back to Becca. And you can see the use of self-reflection pronouns “yourself” here
increases the effect of the sentence. And personal pronoun “it”, “you” and “your” in the
following sentence help the conversation to continue:
Becca: I hate to break it to you, but in exactly one week, your streak is officially going to end.
Holly: (laughs) Maybe you're right.
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As you can see, this is such a long conversation and how personal reference helps to

relate all the sentences to make it becomes a complete and meaningful text. I would like to
show more examples; this is the first talking between Holly and Ben, Amy’s uncle, who is
supposed to be the symbol of the perfect man.
Amy: This is Holly.
Holly: Hi.
Ben: Hi, Holly.
Holly: Nice to meet you (2).
Ben: (into phone) Why wouldn't she be mad? Huh? Well, there's only one thing you
can do. Flowers. And you can't go cheap either. Nope. A dozen. Longstemmed.
Amy: He (2) knows about females.
Lance: He (2) knows more about females than I know about females.
…Holly: He (2) doesn't actually believe that, does he (2)?
Ben: (into phone) But who am I to know? Call me tomorrow and let me know how it
worked out. Bye. (to Holly) Yes, I do believe that. Don't you?
Holly: That flowers always work?
…Ben: Wow, your (3) friend's so cynical!
Amy: Sounds like she (1)is not into romance.
As you can see here, there are four people taking part in the conversation and this text
including two different parallel conversations: the conversation of Ben on the phone and the
other among Amy, Holly, Ben and Lance, the barman. Now let’s see how personal
pronouns link to make both conversations understandable and meaningful. Let’s see the
later conversation, I underline and number some personal reference that is cohesive,
pronouns number (1) refers to Holly, (2) - Ben and (3) to Amy. Amy and Holly came to
meet Ben as Holly complained about her mother and Amy said that her uncle Ben can help.
Amy introduces Holly and Ben and during their greeting “you” indicates Ben and then “he”
is the personal reference of “Ben”. And “he” helps us to link the sentence Holly said with
the previous part of the conversation, the greeting of Ben and Holly which was interrupted
by the conversation on the phone of Ben. It is interesting that here we have two men Lance
and Ben but we can understand that “he” Holly refers here is Ben not Lance. Besides that
the possessive adjective “your” in the sentence “Wow, your (3) friend's so cynical!” Ben

said this sentence with Amy not with Holly but “your” link the sentence with the
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conversation and again ‘she’ in “Sounds like she (1) is not into romance” also relates the
sentence with the whole conversation. The above conversation among Amy, Holly and Ben
is usually interrupted because of Lance and because Ben is on the phone but thanks to the
personal reference, all separately sentences are linked together to make it complete and
meaningful. The conversation is like a smooth flow that never been interrupted.
Here are some more examples of personal reference that appear in the film, and the
personal reference is underlined:
• “Actually, a yellow rose is for your sick grandma. No. For a woman, a red rose. But if
you really want to knock her socks off, you give her an orchid.”
• “You ever seen an orchid? How it floats in the water, so delicate and beautiful? When
a woman gets an orchid, it's, well, she feels like she's floating on a cloud of infinite
possibility.”
It is possible to see the frequency of personal reference in the above text in particular
and in the conversation in general. Personal reference is one of the most popular personal
references used to link sentences together to make text become complete, smooth, and
meaningful.
II.1.2 Demonstrative reference
Demonstrative reference is expressed through determiners and adverbs. According
to Halliday and Hasan, we have neutral one which only consist of “the” and selective one
including participants: this/that/these/those and circumstances: here/then/there/those.
Demonstrative reference can link one item to a single word or phrase, or much longer one
as a piece of text-ranging across several paragraphs. After talking with Ben about flower,
Holly decided to buy an orchid to give to her mother, she lend Amy’s money. Amy was
really confused, she asked: “Are you sure this is a good idea?”. “This” here is demonstrative
reference which refers back to the act of buying flower as well as to the conversation among
Ben, Holly and Amy. Now let’s consider the conversation among Holly, Jean and Zoe after
receiving the orchid.
Holly: Wow! How beautiful. Who are those for?

Jean: Me. Isn't that weird? Someone left me flowers?
…Holly: Well, obviously, someone that saw you at the shop.
…Jean: Or that I love orchids?
…Holly: Mom, look, this is the most romantic thing that a man has ever done for
you. Quit questioning it and enjoy it.
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The demonstrative reference here “those”, “that”, “this” all refer to something that
mentioned before or after. “Those” links to the orchid we already knew from previous part,
“that” in the sentence “Isn't that weird?” relates to the event that someone left flowers for
Jean and so on. All demonstrative here relate to the event that Jean received an orchid from
a secret admirer and they link the sentences of the conversation together. Let’s see the
following conversation in which demonstration reference is a mean of cohesion, the talk of
Holly and Adam, her boy friend at school whose parents divorced and who can draw really
well:
Adam: No. Actually, after he and my mom split up, that's pretty much the only thing
we did together. But, uh, hey! At least I learned how to draw, right?
Holly: Divorce as a career builder. That's nice.
…Adam: No, to, a, ah, comic convention.
Holly: No, not that either.
Adam: Oh, oh, well there's, there's one coming up…
It can be seen from the example that “there” refers back to the comic convention to
link to the previous sentence of Adam and “that” appear three times in the conversation.
First “that” refers to thing that Adam and his dad did together when he was small (which is
mentioned before). Second “that” relates what Holly said in previous sentence and one
more “that” the participants demonstration, relates to the comic convention. Here are more
examples of demonstrative reference, the participant and neutral ones:
• “Wow! I will say one thing though. For those of you who haven't done it yet, put
"Must see New York skyline" on your list of things to do before you die.”
• “No. Some things are. Like a man that sends you an orchid, the most romantic flower,
and then turns around and sends you a yellow rose. That's the kind of flower that

someone sends their sick grandmother in the hospital.”
All above demonstrative reference function as connectors not only within one
sentence but among different ones that mentioned before in the film. They help to link
sentences together. Although, demonstrative reference is less used than personal one but its
cohesive role is undeniable.
II.1.3 Comparative reference
Comparison is expressed by a certain class of adjectives and adverbs to compare the
identification or similarity of items or sometimes compare in terms of quality or quantity.
Now we will find and see how comparative reference do in the film.
• “… Much less make plans to go to school dances.”
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