National open university of nigeria school of arts and social sciences
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- 3.3 Sentence Connection
| 3.2 Textuality A text is said to have textuality if it has unity with respect to its context. What distinguishes a written text from a random collection of sentences is the quality of textuality. It is also referred to as connexity orb connectivityb. Every text has certain resources that enable the reader/listener to identify that it is a text with respect to the context in which it is produced. Let us look at a stretch of sentence to explain more clearly what we mean by textuality. I bought two pairs of shoes when I went to Lagos yesterday. They were both black. One was made in Italy, while the other was made in England. I hope to wear both on alternative days to work. Any good speaker of English should not have any problem with the stretch above. There are some elements in the four sentences that signal meaning and unity. • The word they refers back to the another group of words two pairs of shoes • One refers implicitly to a pair of the shoes • The other refers the other pair of shoes • The word both refers to the two pairs of shoes. It is not difficult to identify all these references in the text. That is why we can easily say there is texture because those items signify that we have a text before us and not just a collection of unconnected sentences. Textuality therefore is those things that make a collection of sentences to qualify as a text rather than just a collection of sentences. Shortly, we shall look in details into the technicalities involved texture. 67 3.3 Sentence Connection Sentence connection is a term used to describe how sentences are connected in larger texts and the resources used to signal such connection. Every collection of sentences cannot be seen as being connected unless they possess some elements that signal their connection. Sometimes the term is referred to as inter-sentence connection to differentiate it from intra sentence connection – the way words in a sentence are connected as opposed to the way sentences in a text are connected. The whole of this Unit and two others that will follow are all about sentence connection Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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