Text Creation

Nunan states that the creation of a written text is a complicated undertaking (1993, p. 2). An understanding of how textuality is achieved, therefore, initially requires an understanding of how language resources are used to create text, “the most extensive unit of meaning” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 566). Halliday and Hasan regard text “as a semantic unit; a unit not of form but of meaning” (1976, p. 2).

Halliday and Matthiessen emphasize that it is important “to be able to think of text dynamically, as an ongoing process of meaning” (2004, p. 524). Beaugrande and Dressler maintain that “the text producer has the intention of pursuing some goal via the text” and thus, text creation is a sub-goal towards the main goal (1981, p. 39).

Texts, then, are produced to achieve goals and to convey meanings, and the greatest challenge is whether or not the intended messages are coherently and appropriately communicated through the use of language since, as Beaugrande and Dressler point out, “knowledge is not identical with language expressions that represent or convey it” (1981, p. 85).

Having established that text creation is a means to an end, and the ultimate objective is to communicate via the text, it is worth examining how meaning is encoded through language. Widdowson proposes that “semantics is the complex interplay of morphology, lexis, and syntax” (1996, p. 61). They interact with each other to create meaning. Semantics is concerned with the meanings of words as lexical items (lexis), the meanings of derivational and inflectional morphemes (morphology) and how words are ordered (syntax) (Widdowson, 1996, p. 53). Morphology is concerned with “how morphemes operate in the processes of derivation and inflection” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 129). Derivation involves ‘lexical innovation’ or

‘formation’, i.e. the way words mean, and inflection is about ‘grammatical adaptation’, i.e. the way words function (pp. 47-48). Therefore, morphology is closely related to lexis and syntax. Widdowson concludes that although meaning is communicated by “the morphological and syntactic processes of word adaptation and assembly; … it is the words which provide the main semantic content” (1996, p.

54).

Morphological and syntactic processes together make up the study of grammar; how words are combined in sentences, and how they are adapted (Widdowson, 1996, p.

48). As grammar is concerned with word combinations and adaptations, it is impossible to think of lexis and grammar as two separate entities. McCarthy believes that there is no major distinction between vocabulary and grammar and “…

any word in the language can be examined from the point of view of grammar, and, vice versa, any word, even words like articles and prepositions, can be considered as vocabulary items” (1990, p. 12).

Halliday and Matthiessen use the terms ‘lexicogrammar’ and ‘grammar’

interchangeably and argue that “grammar and vocabulary are not two separate components of a language- they are just the two ends of a single continuum”, and

“the sound system and the writing system are the two modes of expression by which the lexicogrammar of a language is presented, or realized” (2004, p. 7). In lexicogrammar, according to Halliday and Hasan, there is “no hard-and-fast division between vocabulary and grammar; the guiding principle in language is that the more general meanings are expressed through the grammar, and the more specific meanings through the vocabulary” (1976, p. 5). Grammar is the fundamental processing unit of language (p. 21), and a resource for making meaning (Halliday

and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 31). Widdowson also considers grammar as a tool to express meaning. Grammar, he says, is important because of its communicative purpose. It serves to “adapt words morphologically and organize them syntactically so that they are more capable of encoding the reality that people want to express”

(1996, p. 51).

Within lexicogrammar, system and structure are very important in the creation of meaning. Structure is the “syntagmatic ordering in language patterns, or regularities, in what goes together with what”. System, which is the paradigmatic ordering in language, involves “patterns in what could go instead of what” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 22). System and structure work together and “… each system- each moment of choice- contributes to the formation of the structure” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 23). Therefore, what goes together with what and what has the potential to go instead of what are very important in text creation and “a text is the product of ongoing selection in a very large network of systems- a system network”

(Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 23).

Widdowson states that language elements combining with others along a horizontal dimension are in a syntagmatic relationship, and those that have the same potential to vertically appear in the same environment are in paradigmatic relationship. The horizontal elements exist in combination; sounds or letters combine to form words, words combine to form phrases, phrases combine to form sentences. The vertical elements, on the other hand, exist in association; “when different forms have the same possibility of occurrence in a structure at a particular level, and are therefore equivalent in function, they are paradigmatically associated as members of the same class of items” (1996, p. 33-34). According to Widdowson, this two-dimensional

mode of organization allows the generation of infinite expressions from finite means and “is the essential source of the creativity and flexibility …. of human language”

(1996, p. 34).

Halliday and Hasan argue that all components of the semantic system are realized through the lexicogrammatical system” (1976, p. 6). Stubbs holds that “.. messages are conveyed not only explicitly, by words themselves, but also implicitly, by lexical and syntactic patterning” (1996, p. 10). Morphological and syntactic processes, according to Widdowson, perform the function of extending word meanings, and so

“constitute a communicative resource” (1996, p. 52). Therefore, although grammatical processes play a supportive role in organizing and adapting existing units of lexical meaning to requirements, they do not initiate meaning but “act upon meaning already lexically provided” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 55).

As lexis is the initiator of meaning and grammar organizes and changes lexical meaning according to needs through syntax and morphology, it would be meaningful to look at the major carrier of meaning in more detail. A lexeme or a lexical item is a

“separate unit of meaning, usually in the form of a word, but also as a group of words” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 129). Sinclair holds that “lexical items are not always words, and each word may enter into a variety of relationships with others to realize lexical items” (2004, p. 161). Lexical words are the ‘content’ words of the vocabulary of a language, and “they can be viewed in terms of the relations in which they enter: paradigmatic relations (the options that are open to them) and syntagmatic relations (the company they keep)” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.

38).

Ginzburg defines paradigmatic relations as those “that exist between individual lexical items which make up one of the subgroups of vocabulary items, e.g. sets of synonyms, lexico-semantic groups, etc.”, and holds, for example, that “the meaning of the verb to get can be fully understood only in comparison with other items of the synonymic set: get, obtain, receive, etc.” (1979, p. 46). Paradigmatically, words can form lexical sets. “They function in sets having shared semantic features and common patterns of collocation” and “typically, the semantic features that link the members of a lexical set are those of synonymy or antonymy, hyponymy and meronymy” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 40). Antonymy is “the sense relation of various kinds of opposing meaning between lexical items” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 125), and synonymy “the sense relation of equivalence of meaning between lexical items” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 131). Cohyponyms are “words that are subtypes of the same type” and comeronyms are words that are “part of the same whole” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 40). Hyponymy is characterized by Widdowson as “the sense relation between terms in a hierarchy, where a more particular term (the hyponym) is included in the more general one (the superordinate)” (1996, p. 128).

According to Ginzburg, “syntagmatic relations define the meaning the word possesses when it is used in combination with other words” (1979, p. 46).

Syntagmatically, lexical items can form collocations, “the co-occurrence of lexical items in text” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 125) and “a tendency for words to occur together” (Sinclair, 1991, p. 71). Approaches to the semantic analysis of natural languages depend on the view that ‘lexical items are interrelatable’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 126). The probabilistic view, also known as the ‘collocational theory of lexical meaning’, was supported by the British linguist J. R. Firth (van Buren, 1975,

p. 126). According to Firth, the word ‘night’ is more likely to collocate with the word ‘dark’ than with ‘hippopotamus’, and this probability is part of the meaning of the word ‘night’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 126-127). “These probabilistic lexical relations cut across and therefore independent of grammatical structure” (van Buren, 1975, p.

127). According to the collocational theory, “lexical items are not co-extensive with any grammatical unit” (van Buren, 1975, p. 127). A lexical item like ‘put up with’

should be considered as one lexical item if it significantly co-occurs with ‘a unique cluster of other items’ (van Buren, 1975, p. 127).

Carter and McCarthy also refer to Firth as the father of collocation, stating that he brought the term ‘collocation’ into prominence (1988, p. 32). According to this Firthian view, collocation is one type of meaning and it is “an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words” (Firth, 1951/1957, cited in Carter and McCarthy, 1988, p.

32). Although collocation is often referred to as a ‘Firthian’ term, Nation (2001) notes that Palmer used it before Firth. Palmer’s idea of collocation was that each

“must or should be learnt, or is best or most conveniently learnt as an integral whole or independent entity, rather than by the process of piecing together their component parts” (Palmer, 1933, p. 4, cited in Nation, 2001, p. 317).

Halliday and Matthiessen consider collocation “an instance of lexical cohesion”

which depends on a tendency of items to co-occur (2004, p. 576-577). McCarthy holds that the relationship of collocation is central to the study of vocabulary as it is

“an important organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language” (1990, p. 12).

He regards collocation as a “marriage contract between words”, some words being

“more firmly married to each other than others” and gives ‘blond hair’ as a strong

collocation as blond can refer to almost nothing else but hair (1990, p. 12).

McCarthy does not make a distinction between collocation and colligation, and regards the co-occurrence of ‘the’ (a function word) with a noun (a content word) as collocation (1990, p. 12). Hunston defines ‘colligation’ as “the collocation between a lexical word and a grammatical one” but mostly refers to this co-occurrence as just

‘collocation’ (2002, p. 12-13). Nation also provides a ‘loose’ definition of

‘collocation’ as “any generally accepted grouping of words into phrases or clauses”

(2001, p. 317).

Syntagmatically, words may also appear together with other words forming phrasal verbs, compound nouns, and formulaic phrases, “a (relatively) fixed collocation”

(Widdowson, 1996, p. 60). A lot of collocations, however, “are not fixed and can be syntactically modified to a certain extent” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 60). Halliday and Matthiessen point out that words sometimes come together and form “patterns which lie somewhere between structures and collocations, having some sort of the properties of both” and give ‘take + pride / pleasure / delight + in + -ing’ as an example (2004, p. 45). It is clear from the example that lexical co-occurrences (collocations) and co-occurrences of lexical and grammatical words (colligations) may come together and form longer lexical phrases. Nation has the most global view of collocations:

Collocations differ greatly in size (the number of words involved in the sequence), in type (function words collocating with content words (look with at), content words collocating with content words (united with states), in closeness of collocates (expressed their own honest opinion), and in the possible range of collocates (commit with murder, a crime, hara kiri, suicide…). (2001, p. 56)

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations of lexis play a significant role in text production through forming ‘lexical relations’ (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p.

571). Therefore, lexical cohesion is achieved through lexical relations at the syntagmatic (collocation) and paradigmatic level (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy). Through the choice of lexical items, “a speaker or writer creates cohesion in discourse” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 570). According to Hoey (1991), “lexical cohesion is the only type of cohesion that regularly forms multiple relationships (though occasionally reference does so too). If this is taken into account, lexical cohesion becomes the dominant mode of creating texture” (p. 10).

Halliday and Matthiessen believe that collocations have quite a cohesive effect. This is so because they are “one of the factors on which we build our expectations of what is to come next” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, p. 577). Nation draws attention to the significant relationship between the size of word groupings such as collocation, and the level of proficiency:

when language users segment language for reception or production or to hold it in memory, they typically work with meaningful groupings of items. The size of these groupings, called chunks, depends on the level of proficiency they have attained. At one level they are realized as collocations. (Nation, 2001, p. 317)

Grammar and lexis, therefore, “are the essential resources for meaning”, but “how these resources have to be exploited for language users to achieve meaning”

(Widdowson, 1990, p. 117) is also very important. Therefore, in addition to the semantic meaning created in language through lexico-grammatical processes, there is another dimension in text creation: pragmatics, “what people mean by the language they use” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 61). It is impossible to think of text

creation only in semantic terms as, through text, not only are meanings encoded, but they are also appropriately communicated to the target reader through the context.

Communication “can only be achieved by relating language with context”

(Widdowson, 1990, p. 94).

Pragmatics is concerned with “what people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is said” (Yule, 1996, p. 3). It also involves “how people conform to social conventions” as well as “how people assert themselves and manipulate others” by taking individual initiative (Widdowson, 1990, p. 68).

Therefore, pragmatics “is concerned with how people negotiate meaning” and also

“how they negotiate social relations” (Widdowson, 1990, p. 68). Appropriateness of the language to the social context is very important in conforming to social conventions and building interpersonal relationships. Inappropriate use of language does not simply mean “a violation of linguistic appropriateness norms”, but “may lead to misunderstanding of intent” (Gumperz, 1982, p. 50). Pragmatics is about how people actualize the meaning potential of language (Widdowson, 1996, p. 61).

It is “much concerned with written as with spoken uses of language” such that

“writers assume a degree of shared schematic knowledge, produce texts which are cohesive and which conform to the conventions of a particular genre” (Widdowson, 1996, p. 68).