From: Mike Sangrey (msangrey@BlueFeltHat.org)
Date: Fri Jul 27 2001 - 13:46:41 EDT
> Dear John / I want a man who knows what love is all about / you are
> generous, kind, thoughtful / people who are not like you admit to
> being useless and inferior / you have ruined me for other men / I
> yearn for you / I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart / I
> can be forever happy / will you let me be yours / Gloria
I just want to point out that these sentences, when taken as a unit,
lack cohesion. They appear to be written by someone who is not quite
coherent. And I think that is an important point when trying to
define the nature of a sentence.
Word-sized packages (ie words viewed as syntactic) when collocated
(again syntax) supply to the reader a semantic property of cohesion.
In other words, a text (by definition) tends to hold together. I
haven't said anything profound. The interesting thing is the impact
that has on what makes a sentence a sentence.
What Chet has done, and I think it is good for Chet to have exposed
this, is to show us the effects when both punctuation and cohesion are
removed from a text. Can we unambiguously find the sentences? The
answer is no.
So, one posting (by Richard, was it?) has shown us that punctuation
alone does not define a sentence and now this posting has shown us
that cohesion is needed. If the punctuation is added when there is no
cohesion, our minds fully accept the sentence structure (syntax),
though the incohesive semantics makes us struggle with what is really
being said.
And that's rather interesting. Something which ties together
(cohesion) is necessary for DELIMITING the units. And that should not
surprise us. Something which is conjunctive must, by definition, be
somewhat disjunctive. That is, you can't link together that which is
not in some sense separate.
The point I'm making is that I think there are some lexical semantic
features (ones which I don't really understand) required in a sentence
definition.
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey@BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
"The first one last wins."
"A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
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