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Article published In: ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 76 (1987) ► pp.1–24

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Textual Cohesion in Hindi

A Comparative Study

 | Université de Montréal
 | Université de Montréal
Published online: 1 January 1987
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https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.76.01sin
The purpose of this paper is to summarize some preliminary research on textual cohesion in Hindi. The study of linguistic cohesion attempts to isolate linguistic devices used to ‘link’ sentences in a discourse. The present study was undertaken to find out exactly what cohesion devices are used in Hindi and how the linking texture of Hindi discourses differs from that of English.
Although both Hindi and English use some of the same cohesion devices, there are both quantitative and qualitative differences in their textures. This paper focuses on Hindi-particular cohesion devices and on devices differentially exploited to Hindi and English.
An example of a Hindi particular cohesion device is ‘Adjective Promotion’. The differential exploitation of the device of co-referential NP provides an example of the second type of difference between the two languages. Hindi uses it far more frequently than English.
Our results also provide evidence for the hypothesis that parallel sublanguages of Hindi and English are more alike in their cohesive texture than are different sub-languages of either of these two languages. ‘Stylistic contact’ in the domain of more technical sublanguage may provide an explanation for this.
Our study shows not only what some of the Hindi-particular cohesion devies are but also how a large number of shared cohesion devices are differentially exploited by different languages and what sorts of trade-offs are made amongst the major types of cohesion devices (semantic, syntactic, morphological, and lexical).
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Patry, Richard & Nathan Ménard
2009. Problèmes d’orientation référentielle dans l’analyse de la cohésion. Revue québécoise de linguistique 21:2 ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo

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