Segmentation and segment cohesion: On the thematic organization of the text*

Most linguists concerned with cohesion have focused on the linear relations between sentences. This study is an attempt to extend the notion of cohesion beyond the sentence level, by viewing it as a requirement of the text for connectedness between segments larger than a sentence, such as paragraphs or whole chapters. Of the various concatenation devices listed in Danes( 1974), the most elementary one is the presentation of a given theme in a previous rheme constituent. We will consider here only this type of connectedness, arguing that a prior presentation has two functions: a cohesive one and an informational one. As for the cohesive roie, we have elaborated only on such phenomena as exhibit concatenation of new information in segment final position (irrespective of the nature of the segment). We have further shown the extent to which concatenation of new topics affects text segmentation. Contrary to the view that allows for a text to be segmented before the introduction of a new discourse topic (Sanford and Garrod, 1981; Longacre, 1979; Chafe, 1979), segmenting the text after the introduction of the new/future discourse topic is found to be a widespread phenomenon that prevails at the various levels of the text. Functionally, we have argued that prior concatenation of future discourse in segment final position is motivated by considerations of informational structuring. Segmenting a text after the introduction of the future discourse topic endows the latter with foreground status. Apart from discussing cohesion at the various levels of the text, this paper is an attempt to show that segment final position, of whatever nature, is a parmeter determining informationally foreground status. 0165-4888/83/0003-0155 $2.00 © Mouton Publishers, Amsterdam Text 3(2) (1983), pp. 155-181