16 INTRODUCTION: KEY BASIC CONCEPTS
The phrase constituent is defined by its head, so an NP is defined by the main head-
word or noun within it: here in the last example, the noun is ‘cakes’. Put another way,
for a phrase to be an NP, it must contain a noun as its head. There might be other
words also in the NP, but the noun is the essential one.
In my last example here, the NP also has two pre-modifiers, which are first a deter-
miner ‘the’ and second an adjectival phrase ‘beautifully decorated’. In many sentences,
an NP can consist of only a single noun: the sentence could make sense as ‘cakes fit
with no difficulty . . .’, but not as ‘the beautifully decorated fit with no difficulty’ (unless
you reinterpret ‘beautifully decorated’ as a noun, which isn’t the same sentence at all).
The noun in an NP could also be followed by a post-modifier or qualifier (‘the cakes
altogether fit . . .’). All the elements apart from the noun are optional, though, so nota-
tionally, we can formulate this as
NP → (det) (mod) N (qual)
This means: a noun phrase is constituted by an essential noun as its head, with an
optional determiner (such as ‘the’, ‘a some’, ‘this’), and an optional modifier (such
as an adjective), and an optional qualifier (another adjective). In our example NP above,
we have (det) (mod) N.
The verb phrase (VP) in our example consists only of a verb, ‘fit’. Again, a V is
the essential head in a VP, which can also have an optional auxiliary preceding it (‘have
stolen’, ‘was caught’, ‘might have been running’), and an optional completor follow-
ing it (as in the phrasal verbs ‘run up’, ‘cast off’, ‘look after’, ‘rabbiting on’). So,
VP → (aux) V (compl)
The adverbial phrase (AdvP) in the example is ‘with no difficulty’. This is an adverb
because it modifies the verb (‘fit’), or describes the manner in which the verb is acted
out. Notice that on the surface it looks very like the prepositional phrase (PrepP)
that follows it: ‘into boxes . . .’. This is because both the AdvP and the PrepP in this
sentence are constituted by a preposition (‘with’, ‘into’) followed by another NP.
In the AdvP, the embedded NP is constituted by a pre-modifying adjective (‘no’) and
a noun (‘difficulty’), and in the PrepP, the embedded NP is constituted by three
further NPs, each constituted either by a single noun (‘boxes’, ‘cartons’) or a pre-

government of the two final noun phrases (‘and cartons and little papercups’) by the
PrepP (‘into boxes . . .’) is a type of dependency. The agreement of NPs and VPs that
relate to each other is another type of dependency: the plural NP ‘the beautifully
decorated cakes’ requires a zero-inflected verb-ending on ‘fit’ (that is, not ‘fits’ nor
‘fitting’ nor ‘fitted’). Furthermore, there is a semantic dependency between this
subject and this verb, since ‘fit’ requires a subject that is fittable, and ‘cakes’ requires
a verb that matches the concept too. Agreement (also called concord) includes
matching the appropriate forms for person, number, gender, tense and case.
To illustrate the constituency, dependency and recursion of the example sentence,
we can draw a tree-diagram to show the systematic nature of grammar (see overleaf ).
The upper part of the diagram illustrates the systemic constituent structure very
clearly. The right-hand side of the diagram shows the complex embedding of the over-
all VP, with recurring structures. (Different grammars would draw the diagram a bit
differently, and with variable terminology, but the basic constituency structure shown
here would be common to most approaches). You can see how the other example
sentences given above would also fit into this same tree-diagram:
The well-formed clauses combine in proper ways in sentences and texts and
extended discourse.
An especially fat man arrives in good time before me and you and almost everyone.
Some semi-skimmed milk pours without a splash into flour and eggs and the fruity
mixture.
A nineteenth-century traveller moved at top speed by horses and carriages and steam trains.
So far in this unit, we have outlined the phrasal categories defined by their headwords:
Noun Phrases
Verb Phrases
Adverbial Phrases
Prepositional Phrases
Adjectival Phrases
18 INTRODUCTION: KEY BASIC CONCEPTS
At the bottom of the tree-diagram, each word at the surface of the sentence is labelled

NP
NP
det
V
AdvP
PrepPNPNPAdjP prep
(conj) PrepPprep Nadj nounnounadj
mod
Figure A4.1
A syntactic tree diagram
TEXT AND DISCOURSE 19
Innovations and evolution in grammar are handled by individuals on the basis
that the normative and expected syntax, vocabulary and morphology are flexible within
broad limits. People have no difficulty producing and understanding utterances
without verb phrases (‘Queues likely’, ‘No jeans’), or without noun phrases (‘Slow’,
‘Go now’), or with nouns (‘knife’, ‘access’, ‘host’) used as verbs (‘to knife’, ‘to access’,
‘to host’), and other reversals and shifts. It seems odd to assume that these fragmen-
tary variations in usage are merely incomplete or unrealised versions of properly formed
grammatical sentences. Much more likely is the notion that grammar is treated as a
set of the best rules that apply for the task in hand, but they are always provisional,
adaptable, and contingent on change.
The field of syntax is probably the most hotly and vehemently debated area in
modern linguistics. In this unit, we have presented the closest we can get to a broad
consensus, but almost every syntactician will want to argue with some, most or all of
the concepts we have set out here.
TEXT AND DISCOURSE
In language and linguistics study it is established practice for the term text to be defined
as a continuous stretch of written or spoken language. While you may be more familiar
with thinking of a text as an object that is written down, text should be viewed as inclusive
of both written and spoken forms of language. In its broadest sense, the discipline of

That said, individual discourse analysts will draw upon the importance of con-
text to differing degrees, depending upon which particular sub-discipline of discourse
analysis they follow (see below). It is important to realise at this stage that ‘discourse
analysis’ is a very broad category – there are a number of sub-disciplinary paradigms
which take differing approaches to analysing texts and context.
Cohesion and coherence
In order to produce a thorough analysis of the co-text of a spoken or written text there
are two key categories that can be drawn upon, known as cohesion and coherence.
We will focus on cohesion first of all and then move on to consider coherence.
Cohesion refers to the parts of the language system which tie sentences and clauses
together. Cohesion provides discourse with its structure. Some of the linguistic fea-
tures which are incorporated within the category of cohesion will be familiar to you
already as they are also a part of semantics and pragmatics: prime examples of cohe-
sion include sense relations and referring expressions as illustrated in B2 and A3, along
with deixis, which we also came across in A3.
There are a range of other categories which create cohesion, including repetition,
substitution and ellipsis. Repetition is when the same word or phrase is directly repeated
within a text. Substitution refers to situations where one word is substituted for another
in order to avoid direct repetition. The term ellipsis refers to when material has been
missed out as it is not essential for the meaning of the text to be conveyed – hearers/
readers will be able to work out the textual meaning from the surrounding discourse.
The following example of a short extract taken from a transcript of spoken lan-
guage will illustrate these features of cohesion. The (physical) context will also be detailed
for background information. The extract below contains symbols known as transcription
conventions. These conventions are fully defined in B12, along with a discussion on
the importance of transcription for the linguistic study of interaction.
Two female friends are talking over coffee
.
Context
:

speech, ‘ “I’m not having any more” [babies]’ and in line 7, ‘I was gonna say’ [she has]
‘got to stop’ [having babies].
It is worth commenting on the shift from speech to writing created by the pro-
duction of a transcript here. The transcription process has transformed what was
originally a stretch of spoken language into a stretch of written language. The written
transcription has been created by one of this book’s authors from listening several
times to an audiorecording of the above conversation. In order to conduct discourse
analysis properly and successfully the process of transcription is absolutely crucial
for language and linguistics study. It is simply impossible to pick up the finer details
of spoken discourse just by listening to an audio recording or watching a video, even
if you do this many times.
In addition to listening and watching on multiple occasions you also need to
produce a written text as a fixed record of the spoken discourse that takes place. The
process of transcription for discourse analysis studies is discussed further in C5.
The importance of the process of the production of written transcription for spoken
data analysis more generally is considered in B12.
Coming back to cohesion, other important terminological distinctions when
analysing textual cohesion are anaphora: words which refer to preceding text and
cataphora: words which refer to something in the following text. Both of these terms
are contained within the overarching category of endophora, defined simply as when
linguistic items refer to other linguistic items within the same text.
To illustrate anaphora and cataphora here are two examples taken from a busi-
ness meeting interaction. In the first example, proper noun ‘Colin’ is then followed
by ‘he’ and ‘him’, giving anaphoric reference:
1 Joan: but it’s up to Colin if he doesn’t do it=
2 Steve: =have you sent him a gentle reminder?
In the second example, we have this the opposite way round, with the pronoun ‘he’
linking forward to proper noun ‘Steve’:
1 Julie: does he know that it’s here?
2 Rob: Steve knows that it’s the meeting room yeah