Friday 13 November 2015

Misconstruing General Lexical Cohesion As Instantial

Martin (1992: 327):
At group and word rank instantial relations are constructed through apposition:
[4:2:9.r.]  With the smaller breeds of dog such as Corgis, all the Toy-breeds, Dachshunds and this type of thing we — as our turn comes,
[5:34]  I met Ben, a friend of mine from Toronto.
[5:35]  Ben stroked (i.e. lobbed) the ball over Flo's head.

Blogger Comment:

The only instantial lexical cohesive relation here is in [5:34] — Ben–friend — since this is the only one specific to a single text.  The other two lexical cohesive relations, both hyponymy, are each 'a general fact of English' (Hasan 1985: 81).