American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Cohesion in Russian: A Model for Discourse Analysis

Author(s): Cynthia Simmons
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1981), pp. 64-79
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/307957
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Slavic and East EuropeanJournal

COHESION IN RUSSIAN: A MODEL FOR

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Cynthia Simmons, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In their book Cohesion in English,1 M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya

Hasan categorized those items or operations which are available to the
speaker of English for the establishment of relationships between
sentences-for
the creation of a text. By choosing any item or device
which presupposes information in another sentence, the speaker
(writer) establishes an intersentential cohesive "tie" within the text.
Halliday and Hasan attempted to classify all such text-forming mechanisms in English.
The implications of these linguists' work are many. For example,
any English text can be analyzed definitively as to the number and kind
of cohesive ties. Texts can be compared in terms of the types and the
degree of cohesion. The student of English composition can learn to
recognize and then to provide unity in a text. The categories of cohesion
can be applied in an analysis of other languages and thereby, the
concept might attain universal significance. In this paper, Halliday and
Hasan's description of cohesion will be adapted to Russian.2 This study
is only one of many which follow naturally from a reading of Cohesion in
English.
In Halliday and Hasan's terminology, "cohesion" is a product of
certain options in the linguistic system per se. They are to be differentiated from structural choices which must be made as to information
structure and topic versus comment.3 Although these latter are textual
phenomena and do contribute to coherence in discourse, they do not
provide the wide range of options or allow for the same degree of
variation between texts as do the "non-structural" devices of cohesion.
Halliday and Hasan discovered five types of cohesion in English: Reference, Substitution, Ellipsis, Conjunction, and Lexical Cohesion. For
reasons which will be made clear, an analysis of Russian revealed only
four of the above categories-substitution
is not a viable category of
cohesion in Russian.
SEEJ, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1981)
64

Cohesion in Russian

65

Before each of the types of cohesion is described, it is necessary for

our purposes to define both the "text" and the "sentence" since there is
no general consensus on the definitions of these terms. Any string
characterized by a definitive intonational contour followed by a full stop
can constitute a sentence.4 This definition does not restrict the sentence
to any minimal size, as an appropriate intonational contour followed by
a full stop can be imposed on any string. This definition can limit the
length of a sentence, however, in that it enables the listener/reader to
establish sentence boundaries (albeit somewhat impressionistically) in
speech or in a text which lacks the expected acoustic or orthographic
cues. It is a definition which is useful in the analysis of texts in which the
author has purposely disregarded punctuation.

NEUTRAL

SELECTIVE

FAR

NEAR
I
PARTICIPANT

6tot---

tot

tut
zdes'

tam

0
PLACE

(ENGLISH
"THE")
CIRCUMSTANCE

TIME

sejcas
teper'

togda

As the name implies, comparative reference involves a comparison

of some sort. It may be a matter of likeness or non-likeness (general
comparative reference), or it may be a comparison between the quantity
or quality of items (particular comparative reference). The table below
presents some examples of Russian words which signal comparative
reference:

COMPARISON
GENERAL

IDENTITY

DETERMINER

ADV

tot le samyj

ravno

odinakovyj

tak

DET

SUBST

to Ze
samoe
QUANTITY

SIMILARITY

poxotij
podobnyj
sxodnyj

NON-SIMILARITY

raznyj
razlicnyj

drugoj
inoj

bol'ge
men'se
e?te

podobno

raznoobrazno
razlicno
QUALITY

NON-IDENTITY

po-drugomu
inate

co
com
ad

Cohesion in Russian

67

The text is defined here as a spoken or written passage of any length

which represents a single unit or whole. The coherence of a passage
depends then on its textual unity. The concept of cohesion provides the
means for analyzing one aspect of that unity. A series of sentences will
constitute a text if each sentence is cohesive with the surrounding
(usually preceding) discourse by at least one (cohesive) tie.5 Of course
cohesion alone does not insure the unity of the text. There is the question of the text's appropriateness with respect to external reality, its
correspondence to the context of situation.6 One must keep in mind,
however, that there are texts, belles-lettres being the obvious example,
the coherence of which is not dependent primarily or even secondarily
on their relationship to external reality.7 There are yet other factors
which may lend coherence to a text. These are purely formal devices,
such as rhyme, meter, alliteration, syntactic parallelism, and so forth.
Literary texts may depend heavily for their coherence on the formal
devices just mentioned. In the majority of nonliterary texts, however,
such devices are not consciously employed as a source of coherence. The
claim here is that concerns of appropriateness and purely structural or
purely formal means of coherence are clearly secondary to cohesion in
their importance in the text-forming process: the transmission of meaning from sentence to sentence. In fact, it is quite possible that none of
these other factors is sufficient to create a text unless it is first cohesive,
that is, unified by a series of cohesive ties.8
As stated earlier, only four of the five types of cohesion suggested
for English were found in Russian. These will be described briefly; then
there will follow a discussion of substitution and why it is not a category
of cohesion in Russian.
Reference describes the process by which items in the language
are interpreted by means of information from the context (accompanying text) or the context of situation (as defined by Malinowski; see Note
7). For reference to be cohesive, the information necessary to interpret a
reference item must be located in another sentence within the text. The
three sub-types of reference described by Halliday and Hasan, personal,
demonstrative, and comparative, are also adequate for an analysis
of Russian.
Personal reference is signified in Russian by the personal pronouns
and possessive determiners. Although virtually all of these are referential, there is a major division between first and second persons and third
person as they relate to both the speech situation and cohesion. In the
speech situation, there is a speaker and an interlocutor. The third
person merely indicates "not one of the above." This meaning can then
be extended to "that one" or "it" and can denote objects or abstract

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Slavic and East European Journal

entities, or it can take on a demonstrative connotation. Because the first

and second persons primarily indicate roles in the speech situation, they
often refer to empirical reality, not to items within the text, and therefore do not contribute to cohesion. Third-person pronouns and possessive determiners are not fundamental to the speech situation. They
indicate other persons or things, usually located in the text, and thus,
are characteristically cohesive. This is not to say that first- and secondperson pronouns cannot be cohesive. In a dialogue within a narrative,
their ultimate referents are within the text and they provide cohesion.
Likewise, third-person pronouns and possessives can indicate a person
who is not identified in the text; in this case they would not be cohesive.
Items of demonstrative reference convey the proximity of elements
in the communication process. They can specify the location of objects in
external reality as well as the proximity of items in a text. In the latter
case, demonstrative reference effects cohesion. The following table illustrates demonstrative reference in Russian:9
The second type of cohesion, ellipsis, describes the situation where
necessary structures or parts of a sentence are omitted, and the missing
information can be retrieved from the accompanying text or the context
of situation. Again, cohesion results only when the omitted information
is to be found in another sentence in the text. Ellipsis, unlike reference,
is primarily a grammatical relation. If a word or clause is omitted in a
sentence, that omission presupposes a word of the same grammatical
class or a clause of the same grammatical type. For this reason, ellipsis
is sub-categorized on the basis of a grammatical analysis of the process:
Ellipsis
A. Nominal Ellipsis
1. Ellipsis of Nominal Phrase with Adjectiveas Head
2. .. .With Post-Determineras Head
3. .. .With Determiner as Head
B. Verbal Ellipsis
1. Lexical Elipsis
2. OperatorEllipsis
C. Clausal Ellipsis
1. PropositionalEllipsis
2. ModalEllipsis
3. General Ellipsis of the Clause (all elements but one omitted;usually occursin
question-answersequence)
4. ZeroEllipsis (entire clause ommitted)

It is not suitable in a paper of this length to describe in detail all the

grammatical analyses (of the noun phrase, verb phrase, and clause)
upon which the sub-categorization of ellipsis is based. However, since
this particular analysis of the verb phrase as consisting of a lexical verb

Cohesion in Russian

69

and perhaps an operator is not so common in a treatment of Russian, a

brief explanation would no doubt be helpful. Here "lexical" verb denotes
the main verb, that verb which can be itself represent a complete verbal
group. The vast majority of Russian verbs fall into this group: sidet',
utit'sja, dumat', and so forth. In contrast, verbal operators cannot represent complete verbal groups (unless, of course, there is ellipsis of the
lexical verb). Verbal operators are found in analytic (compound) verbal
constructions. Examples of verbal operators in Russian are the tense
operator byt: "Cto vy budete delat'?" (What will you do?) and the modal
operator mo6' as in "Cto ja mogu skazat'?" (What can I say?). There are
other modal operators; smet' starat'sja, namerevat'sja, and so forth.
Viewing the verb phrase in Russian as comprising these two components, lexical verb and possibly an operator, is useful in describing
ellipsis of structures in the verb phrase.10
The third type of cohesion in Russian is called conjuction and
results when certain relationships between sentences are made explicit
grammatically by the use of some conjunction, adverb, or prepositional
phrase. Halliday and Hasan proposed four categories of relationships
which hold between sentences. Their analysis, although not indisputable, was accepted on a general level for Russian since it led to an
adequate description of Russian "conjunctives." These four types of
conjunctive relationships: additive, adversative, causal, and temporal,
can be represented in Russian by the words "i," "odnako," "tak," and
"potom" respectively. It must be remembered that these conjunctives
and others that fall under the categories they represent always operate
between sentences. Thus the conjunctive "i"should not be confused with
the conjunction "i"which signals coordination within the sentence. 1
The final type of cohesion to be defined is lexical cohesion. This type
differs from the others in that it does not involve some grammatical
relation but is a matter of vocabulary. That is, a word forms a lexical tie
with some other item because of the combined factors of their intrinsic
relation through meaning plus their co-occurrence in the same text.
Reference items, conjunctives, and structural gaps (ellipsis) in a text
presuppose (the preceding) discourse which, if located beyond the sentence boundary, can contribute to cohesion. A word forms a lexical tie
only when it occurs in the same text as another word (in a different
sentence) which relates to it in some way. There are two major types of
lexical cohesion. A word forms a lexical tie only when it occurs in the
same text as another word (in a different sentence) which relates to it in
some way. There are two major types of lexical cohesion: reiteration and
collocation. Reiteration can be sub-categorized according to the degree
of identity in meaning that two words share. They can be repetitions,

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Slavic and East EuropeanJournal

they can be of different forms, but can share the same definition
(synonyms/near-synonyms), or they can be in some hierarchical relationship to each other (superordinates). Finally a word of the most
general meaning can represent another word even though the words are
not members of a specific word class (general words). Some examples of
general words in Russian are "eelovek" (human), "vega"' (inanimate
concrete count), and "dela" (inanimate abstract).
Collocation, the other major sub-type of lexical cohesion, concerns
the probability of co-occurrence of two lexemes in a text. Although the
words may be quite different in meaning, "6ernyj-belyf' or "janvar'fevral'," they are still related in some lexico-semantic way, as opposites
in meaning (similarity) or as members of a series (contiguity). The
analysis of collocational ties is to some extent intuitive and in actual
textual analysis, an attempt must be made to limit "contamination" of
the data, perhaps by rejecting any dubious collocational ties. However,
since lexical cohesion is the major source of cohesion in most texts, the
fact that some collocational ties might be intentionally overlooked cannot generally affect the overall significance of lexical cohesion in comparison with the other types.
It remains to discuss the category of cohesion called substitution
which Halliday and Hasan describe for English. It is related to ellipsis
in that some noun phrase, verb phrase, or clause is replaced. In ellipsis,
it is replaced by nothing, but in the case of substitution, it is replaced by
a kind of grammatical marker which holds a structural position "open"
for information from the (preceding) text. The nominal substitutes are
"one, ones" as in "Does he have a new car?-No, an old one," and "(the)
same" as in "He wants a pastrami on rye.-She ordered the same." The
verbal substitute is "do (so)"; for example "He promised to submit the
report on Friday. He still hasn't done so." The clausal substitutes are
"so/not": "Do you think the hurricane will reach New Jersey?-I think
so/not."
The English substitutes have been reviewed here so that they
might be compared linguistically with their translations in Russian.
Halliday and Hasan note that the purpose of the nominal substitutes
"one, ones" is to prevent any possible confusion as to whether, in an
elliptical noun phrase, an attributive adjective is indeed an adjective or
a noun. Since for the most part, adjectives and nouns are distinguished
morphologically in Russian, there is no need for such a substitute. The
Russian counterpart of the example above would be elliptical: "U nego
novaja maSina?-Net, staraja."
The substantivized phrase "toBesamoe" is accounted for in Russian
under comparative reference. Although it seems to function at times

Cohesion in Russian

71

just as the English substitute "(the) same," there are instances where
"(the) same" cannot be translated by "to Se samoe" (for example, when
co-reference is intended). These apparent counterparts have different
distributions. For Russian, "to Se samoe" can be handled satisfactorily
under comparative reference where it is categorized along with the
related adjectival phrase "tot Se samyj."
The English verbal substitute "do" is a later development of the
lexical verb "do." As a substitute, it has lost its former meaning and
functions only as a grammatical counter. Although "delat"' has a wide
range of definitions, it is not a substitute. An English verbal phrase
containing the substitute "do"would be expressed in Russian using the
intended verb or there would simply be ellipsis of the verb.
In the case of clausal substitution, not only is there no evidence of
such substitutes in Russian, the question must be raised as to the
validity (or elegance) of Halliday and Hasan's treatment of this
phenomenon in English. The translation of "I think so/not" in Russian,
"Ja dumaju, (Cto) da/net," suggests an alternate explanation of the
function of the English "substitutes." If"yes" and "no"can appear in this
environment in Russian, why then should the English "so"and "not" be
anything but variants in complimentary distribution with "yes" and
"no"? These cohesive words are then accounted for in Halliday and
Hasan's description under "general ellipsis with 'yes' and 'no."'
Although it may be desirable to establish clausal substitution in an
analysis where substitution must exist, there is certainly no justification for treating "da" and "net" as clausal substitutes in Russian.
Halliday and Hasan prefer to define ellipsis as "substitution by
zero." The analysis of cohesion in Russian does not support this hierarchical definition. It would seem that in any language, the omission of
information (ellipsis) is a fundamental device of cohesion, and the replacement of that information with a marker (substitution) is an optional development. Thus it would be better to define substitution in
terms of ellipsis which is more likely to be a universal category of
cohesion.
With the cohesive items and operation in the grammar and lexicon
so defined, it is possible to devise a coding scheme by which texts can be
analyzed and compared for number and types of cohesive ties. The types
and sub-types of cohesion can be symbolized by a letter-number code as
follows:
Reference (R)
Personal (1)
on/ego ... (entire declension)
ona/ee

Rla
Rib

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Slavic and East European Journal

ono/ego
onilix
ty/tebja
vy/vas
my/nas
Demonstrative (2)
Near (oto/Mti,
tut, sej6as)
Far (to/te, tam, togda)
Comparative (3)
Identity
Similarity
Non-Identity
Non-Similarity
Comparison,quantity
Comparison,quality
Ellipsis (E)
Nominal (1)
Determiner as Head
Post-determiner as Head
Adjective as Head
Verbal (2)
Lexical
Operator
Clausal (3)
Propositional (can be total or partial-some Complementor Adjunctpresent)
Modal
General ellipsis of the clause (all elements but one omitted)
Zero (entire clause omitted)
Conjunction(C)
Additive (i)
Adversative (odnako)
Causal (tak)
Temporal (potom)
Lexical (L)
Same Item
Synonym/Near-synonym
Superordinate
General Word
Collocation

Rlc
Rid
Rle
R f
Rig
R2a
R2b
R3a
R3b
R3c
R3d
R3e
R3 f
Ela
Elb
Elc
E2a
E2b
E3a
E3b
E3c
E3d
C1
C2
C3
C4
L1
L2
L3
L4
L5

This coding scheme is designed to capture the more general distinctions between two or more texts in a comparative study. If so desired, it
For
could be expanded in most cases to indicate finer distinctions.
be
For
could
classified
as
to
additive
example, conjunctives
sub-type.
"i" could be distinguished
from its negative counterpart
conjunctives,
"ni," and both from the additive conjunctive which connotes an alternative "ili."
To illustrate how this model might be used in actual textual analysis, the first eleven sentences of L.N. Tolstoj's "Smert' Ivana Il'ita" have

Cohesion in Russian

73

been reproduced below. In this brief excerpt, each major category of

cohesion is represented by at least one tie. There is a listing beneath
each sentence of the number and type of cohesive ties found therein, the
cohesive words themselves, and those words (or sentences) which they
presuppose. In order to locate within the text the item presupposed by
the cohesive word, a system of notation is used which was suggested by
Halliday and Hasan in Cohesion in English. Under the column entitled
"Distance," a "O" indicates that the presupposed word (or sentence) is
immediately preceding. A number preceded by "N" (non-mediated)
denotes that the presupposed word is to be found that many sentences
backward in the text. If an "M" (mediated) precedes the number, it
signifies that the presupposed word is mediated by another cohesive
word that many sentences back in the text. it should be noted that
unless otherwise stated, these letter-number codes direct the reader to
information in the preceding text.
From "Smert' Ivana Il'ita"
Number of
Ties

Cohesive
Item

Type

Distance

Presupposed
Item

1. B 6onbLUoM 3AaHMMcyAe6HblX y'pe)KAeHM

BO BpeMsl nepepblBa
M
B Ka6
no
MenbBMHCKI4X
HneHbl
Aeny
npoKypop COwLnMCb
3aceAlaHmR
WHeTe IBaHa EroposB4a WUe6eK, H 3awuen pa3roBop o 3HaMeHMTOM

KpacOBCKOM
Flene. (During the interval in the Melvinski trial in the
large building of the Law Courts the members and public prosecutor
met in Ivan Egorovich Shebek's private room, where the conversation
turned on the celebrated Krasovski case. 12
o

2. QCeAop BacMnbeBMs pa3ropswlHncs, OKa3bBiaRHenofcyLHOCTb,

He BcTynuB
laBaH EropoeMH cTORn Ha CBoeM, neTp Ke IIBaHOBsHL,
cHaLiana B cnop, He npMHMManB HeM y4aCTMAMnpocMaTpMBan TOJlbKO
iTO nolaHHble "BeAOMOCT.,,> (Fedor Vasilievich warmly maintained
that it was not subject to their jurisdiction, Ivan Egorovich maintained
the contrary, while Peter Ivanovich, not having entered into the discussion at the start, took no part in it but looked through the Gazette which
had just been handed in.)
3

HenofcyFHOCTb
MBaHEropoeBw
B cnop

L5
LI
L2

0
0

VosaHa EropoBw4a

pa3roeop

/Aeno

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Slavic and East European Journal

3. rocnoAa! - CKa3anJOH,- IaBaH l/nbIbll-TOyMep. ("Gentlemen,"

he said,

"Ivan Ilych has died!")

2

rocnoAa

L4

$eAop
etc.
BacMnbeBMH,

OH

Rla

LBaHOBMH
neTp

E3c

Sentence 3

4. Hey>Kenw?("You don't say!")

1

5. BOT, HMTaiTe, - CKa3an OH c)eAopy BacMnbeBMHy,nolAaBBaL

eMy
cBeKMM,naxyqMr eque HOMep.("Here, read it yourself," replied Peter
Ivanovich, handing Fedor Vasilievich the paper still damp from the
press.)
3

OH

Rla

N.1+
M.

OH
neTpVBaHoBMH

L1
L3

N.2
N.2

BacHnbieBH-

(Delop

ceA?opy
BacmnbieBH4y
HoMep

( BeAoMOCTWM,

6. B HepHOMo6OAKe 6bino HaneHaTaHO:"nfpacKOBbqceAopOBHa

ronOBsHa c ywUJeBHblM
npHcKop6He M H3BseaeT pOAlHblX1 3HaKOMblXO
KOHHMHeBO3njo6neHHoro cynpyra CBoero, LneHa CyAe6HoA nanaTbl,

IBaHa lnbu4la ronoBHHa, nocneAoeaBuweR 4-ro cpeBpanFlcero 1882

roAqa.(Surroundedby a black borderwere the words:"Praskovya

Fedorovna Golovina, with profoundsorrow, informs relatives and
friendsof the demiseof her belovedhusbandIvanIlychGolovin,Member of the Courtof Justice,whichoccurredon Februarythe 4th of this
year 1882.)
6

L5

N.2

yMep

npMcKOp64eM

L5

N.2

yMep

OKoHHHHe
qneHa
Cyqe6HoR
lBaHaMnbMwa

L5
L1

N.2
N.4

yMep
lneHbI

L5

N.3

L1

N.2

HepHoM

HenofcyAHOCTb
HIBaH nbWqI

7. BblHOCTena B nflTHI4Ly,B 1 Hac nonony/HM.1 (The funeral will take

placeon Fridayat oneo'clockin the afternoon.").

2

8.

Tena
Tena

L5
L4

0
0

KOHL*HHe

VBaH /nb14q

IBaHLlonbMH
6bln coTOBapHu4
rocnoA,MBce no6wn4
co6paBWumxcF

ero. (IvanIlychhadbeena colleagueof the gentlemenpresentandwas

liked by them all.)

Cohesion in Russian
4

9. OH 6onen

MBaHM1nbM4
co6paBWIUxcS
rocnoA
nKo6Min

L1
L2
L1
L2

N.1
N.6
N.4
N.

75

VBaHaVlnbMa
cowJnWCb

rocnoAa
Bo3nio6jeHHoro

y)Ke HecKOJnbKOHeAen; roBopn4M, HTO 60ne3Hb

ero

HeM3nequMa.(He had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be
incurable.)
2

OH,ero (2)

Rla

VIBaHlnbuW4

10. MecTo OCTaBanOCb3a HMM,HO6bino coo6pa)KeHmeo TOM,HTOB

AneKceeB MOKeT6blTb Ha3HaleH Ha ero MeCTO,Ha
cny4ae ero CMepTM
MecTe Ke AneKceeBa - unw BIHHIKOB, MnM
UWTa6enb. (His post had been

kept open for him, but there had been conjectures that in case of his
death Alexeev might receive his appointment, and that either Vinnikov
or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev.)
4

3a HHM,ero
ero (3)
cMepTM

Rla

M. 1

L5

N.2

OH,ero
mBaHMlAJbMH
Teno

11. TaK HTO,ycnbixaB o CMepT M1BaHaMlnbwHa,

nepBaSi MblCnbKa)KAoro
B
0
6blna
M3 rocnog,
Ka6wHeTe,
TOM, KaKoe 3HaHeHMe
co6paBWiuXC5:
CaMmXHneHOB
MoKeT MMeTbCMepTb Ha nepeMeu4eHU1l MJ nOBbwBeHMI4
HnIMX1 3HaKOMblx.
(So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the
first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the
changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their
acquaintances.)
10

TaK4TO
o cMepT4 (2x)
MsaHa MlnbLHa
Mblcnb
t3 rocnoA
co6paBsUJxcF
B Ka6HHeTe
qneHOB
3HaKOMblX

C3
LI
LI
L2
L1
L1
L1
L1
L1

0
0
N.2
0
N.2
N.2
N.9
N.4
N.4

Sentence 10
cMepTH
lMaH M1nbH4
coo6paKeHme
rocnoA
co6paBuWLxc5

Ka6HHeT
,neHa
3HaKOMblX

It is impossible to draw any conclusions concerning the nature of

Tolstoj's discourse on the basis of a few lines from the story. The observations which can be made concern texts in general. Upon reviewing just a
few lines from "Smert' Ivana Il'i,a," the reader will notice the predominance of lexical ties. This is to be expected since it is words such as these
which denote material reality (or in this case, the reality of the novel)
which are the main vehicle transmitting meaning in discourse. Because

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Slavic and East European Journal

of the number of such ties and of the complexity of the relationships

expressed by them, lexical ties are at once the richest source of stylistic
variation and the most dificult category of cohesion to analyze.
One possible way to sub-categorize lexical ties might be on the basis
of thematic lexical "chains." Even in this small sample from Tolstoj's
story, the theme of death is already represented by seven lexical ties. If
the entire story were analyzed for cohesive lexical ties, other themes
could be identified and compared to this early-developing theme of
death in terms of their lexical representation, development and location
in the text, and so on. There are, of course, other ways of studying lexical
cohesion or what is often termed generally as "repetitions" elsewhere in
research on discourse. What an analysis of textual cohesion offers to
discourse studies is a more reliable method of locating and classifying
(grammatically and semantically) lexical "repetitions" of all sorts.
Another general observation which can be made from a study of
even the brief excerpt above is that cohesive ties are overwhelmingly
anaphoric, interpretable from information in the preceding text. Although a cohesive tie can indicate an item which is located in the
ensuing text, it is a relatively rare occurrence.
A complete analysis of the number, type, and distribution of cohesive ties in "Smert' Ivana MI'ita"would lead to many other conclusions
concerning Tolstoj's particular style of discourse as well as the nature of
discourse in general. It would be seen that a relatively large number of
personal referential ties (in this case, masculine personal reference) is
an indication of third person narration. It would also become apparent
that certain kinds of cohesive ties are much less common than others.
These and other observations could then be compared to those resulting
in an analysis of a literary work which differs dramatically from "Smert'
Ivana Il'ita." Such a comparative study could lend support to the generalizations concerning cohesion in discourse or it could serve as a basis
for investigating stylistic variation in the works under consideration.
Limitations of space preclude a discussion of a comparative study of
the sort just suggested from which the above analysis of an excerpt from
"Smert'Ivana Il'iUa"was taken (See Note 2). Nonetheless a few results of
that investigation should be mentioned since they illustrate some ways
in which the analysis of textual cohesion can contribute to comparative
studies in literature.
One would expect that the obvious differences between Tolstoj's
"Smert' Ivana Il'iUa" (henceforward "Smert"') and Sasa Sokolov's Skola
dlja durakov (Skola) would be revealed by almost any method of comparative analysis, including that of the texts' patterns of cohesion. In
general this proved to be true. The excerpts varied significantly in the

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number of occurrences of personal reference, especially of masculine

personal reference. The greater number of masculine personal referential ties in "Smert"' was attributed, as mentioned above, to the thirdperson narration in the excerpt and, in addition, to frequent reference to
the central figure Ivan Il'ic. The excerpt from Skola, on the other hand,
represents a dialogue between two personalities of a schizophrenic boy,
and there is none of the personal reference (third person) which is
characteristic of omniscient narration. Nor is there, in this excerpt, any
recurring reference to other characters which is another possible source
of personal reference.
The texts exhibited the same number of occurrences of ellipsis.
Ellipsis is most common in conversation, and nearly all of the cases of
ellipsis in "Smert"' occur in the dialogue at the beginning of the story.
The entire excerpt from Skola is a dialogue and the elliptical ties are
fairly evenly distributed throughout the text.
There were twice as many conjunctives in the excerpt from Skola
than in that from "Smert'." These were predominantly internal conjunctives, an aspect of conjunction not discussed in this paper, but which is
related to the representation of direct speech in a text. The greater use of
internal conjunctives in Skola was interpreted as being a function of the
narrator's (narrators') effort to impose lucidity of a less-than-lucid
discourse.
Since lexical cohesive ties (L1-L5) are overwhelmingly the most
frequent type of tie in most discourse, it is this category which offered
the best means of characterizing and differentiating the texts. Lexical
chains in "Smert"' identified the major theme of death in the excerpt,
the major character Ivan Il'ic, a minor theme, religion, and others. It is
difficult to view the major lexical chains in Skola (for example, "the
station," "the pond," "the bicycle") as dominating ideas or figures in the
novel. Moreover, the chains in Skola seem to be related not only paradigmatically in the text, but also syntagmatically or metonymically
according to their proximity in the world of the novel. Just how lexical
chains are to be interpreted is a complex question, and in the study
under consideration, the results are, for the most part, merely suggestive. Still, as concerns Skola, the nature of the lexical chains in the
excerpt seem to represent a general problem in the novel; that is, the
eccentric perceptions of the narrator(s) and their confrontation with the
reader's expectations. An analysis of the lexical cohesive ties in "Smert'
Ivana Il'ica" and Skola dlja durakov is a logical starting point for a
comparative study of the works. Presumably an analysis of cohesive ties
would provide just as fruitful a method for comparative literary analyses in general.

78

Slavic and East European Journal

Despite the difficulties involved in a study of textual cohesion; for

example, the copious amount of data which is produced and must be
analyzed or the degree of subjectivity which is certainly introduced by
the person classifying the ties, the schema introduced by Halliday and
Hasan and presented here in its Russian variant offers a fairly analytical method of investigating the relationships between sentences in a
text. This information is of obvious interest to the linguist concerned
with discourse analysis. Perhaps even more exciting, however, are the
implications of this approach for defining stylistic variation in
literature.
NOTES
1 For a more detailed explanation and analysis of this conceptin English, the reader
should consult M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Cohesionin English (London:
Longman, 1976).
2 The investigation which led to the results presentedin this paperis presentedin full
detail in Cynthia F. Simmons, Cohesionin Russian: The MajorResourceof Textual
Unity (Dissertation, Brown University, 1979). Another extension of the study of
textual cohesion is the comparativeanalysis of cohesionin literary texts as a device
for locating some aspects of stylistic variation. In my dissertation, I examine the
cohesion in excerpts from two works of Russian literature: L.N. Tolstoj's"Smert'
Ivana Il'ica"and Sasa Sokolov'sSkola dlja durakov.
3 In his article "LanguageStructure and Language Function,"John Lyons ed., New
Horizons in Linguistics (Baltimore:Penguin, 1970), Halliday illustrates the distinction between topic and comment and old and new information and locates these
(along with cohesion)within the so-called"textualcomponent"of language.
4 This definition of a sentence is not a new one and has been proposed,in varying
terminology, elsewhere in the literature. For one argument, see Bohumil Palek,
Cross-Reference:Study from Hyper-Syntax(Praha:Universita Karlova, 1968), 135,
on the significance of the full stop.
5 A passage consisting of only one sentence naturally constitutes a text since it is
unified by grammatical constituent structure. Still, cohesion does occur below the
level of the sentence (with the use of conjunctions,referentialpronouns,wordrepetitions, and so forth), although it is of more interest in textual analysis as a hypersentential phenomenon.
6 Since Malinowski first introducedthe term "contextof situation"in "TheProblemof
Meaning in Primitive Languages"in C.K. Ogdenand I.A. Richards,The Meaningof
Meaning (New York:Harcourt,Brace, 1923),the problemsof (external)referenceand
pragmatics have received increasingly more attention from modern linguists. A
number of analyses have been offeredto describethe relationshipbetween language
and environment;see for example, the schema in Halliday, McIntosh,and Strevens,
The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching(London:Longman,1964).
7 At times it may be demandedthat the text be "appropriate"
with respectto empirical
reality (perhapsforpolitical reasons),but such a demandintrudeson the autonomyof
the aesthetic text. On the other hand, it is possible to focus on the relationship
between the aesthetic text and its imaginaryworld;yet it is usually assumedthat the
work of art is compatiblewith the worldit has created.

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An analysis of the cohesion in those literary works which rely mainly on formal
devices (rhyme, meter, syntactic parallelism, and so on) for their coherence might be
one way to determine whether or not the works are successful; that is, constitute a
text.
The terms "participant" and "circumstance" are Halliday's and concern transitivity
functions. See the reference in Note 3. Also, the arrow from "otot"to "tot"symbolizes
the fact that in contemporary standard Russian, the distinction between near and far
in the demonstrative determiner is neutralized. Etot is ambiguous as to proximity,
while tot is marked "+ far."
The dichotomy of lexical verbs versus verbal operators is more common in the
descriptions of other languages, like English, where analytic verbal constructions are
more prevalent. This kind of analysis is nonetheless preferable in dealing with the
Russian language; not only because it facilitates a description of verbal ellipsis, but
also because it distinguishes between verbs which can occur with infinitives (catenatives) and verbs which must do so (operators). This distinction is missed in the
discussion of"subjunctive infinitives" in Grammatika sovremmenogo russkogo literaturnogojazyka (Moskva: Nauka, 1970), 514.
As a source of cohesion, intonation is included by Halliday and Hasan under the
category of conjunction. Due to the obvious complexity involved in analyzing the
cohesive effect of intonation, and since intonation is not usually of concern in textual
analysis, their treatment of this aspect of cohesion was brief. For the same reasons, no
attempt was made to categorize the various cohesive sentence intonations in Russian.
Translations by Aylmer Maude.