Another word or phrase with identical meaning might be used:
During the Middle Ages writing came under the control of monks who worked in monastery libraries copying manuscripts by hand. Each copyist was able to cover an average of four pages per day...
Or phrases with similar meanings might be sufficient to maintain the linking:
The Egyptians held a monopoly on the production of papyrus in spite of attempts to cultivate it elsewhere. Egypt soon became the main supplier of paper made from papyrus to civilisation around the Mediterranean.
Sometimes lexical cohesion will involve words from superordinate (covering) categories:
Carolingian script was fast to write and soon became popular throughout Europe. This style of writing was commonly called 'black-letter' because the closeness of the script made pages look black with writing.
Books were also produced on topics other than theology (religious studies) and texts began to appear in the local languages. This meant that not only Latin scholars had access to literature but also the middle classes.
Words from the same semantic category might be used:
The earliest evidence of recorded transactions dates from 3500BC when cylindrical clay seals (bullae) were marked with notches indicating quantities of goods. Clay tablets from the same period also record pictograms representing types of business transaction.
b) Conjunction
Another way in which texts are linked together is by using conjunctions or joining words. Conjunctions are very powerful and do more than just link text together. Different conjunctions demonstrate different relationships between the parts of text. We have seen this when we looked at rhetorical relationships and sentence functions.
With the rise of universities there was more work for the copyist and students would even hire texts from booksellers and copy them out themselves. But the age of the handwritten manuscripts was to come to an end in the mid 15th century when the printing press was invented.
Unical script is essentially capital letters, 'half unical, which developed later was more like our modern 'lower case'. However, it is was a script called Carolingian that is the precursor of our modern lower case.
The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow typists down. This also stopped the keys from jamming.
By far the most common conjunction used to link ideas in English is the word 'and':
Carolingian script was faster to write and soon became popular throughout Europe.
When several things are linked the 'and' is replaced with a comma, but the final member of this list is precede by 'and':
New subjects began to appear with books on medicine, cooking, astronomy, and courtly love.
c) Coreferentiality
Coreferentiality refers to links using pronouns to replace the word. The original word which the pronoun refers to is called its 'antecedent'. Person pronouns (he, she, it, they etc) or demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these etc) can be used to create coreferential links within a text. Anaphoric pronouns must agree grammatically with their antecedents otherwise readability is obstructed:
This writing is known as Cuneiform writing (from the Latin word cuneus 'a wedge') since it was frequently written using a small triangular wooden stylus which was pressed into soft clay. (3rd person singular impersonal)
By the end of the 12th century guilds of trades people and other business organisations began to document their merchandise and business transactions. They began to produce books on other topics and wrote in the local languages. (3rd person plural)
The natural thing is to fold the rectangular sheet of a whole prepared skin, which makes two leaves or four pages. These may then be grouped and sewn together at the fold to make a book. (3rd person plural)
Coreferentiality is also restricted by constraints on discourse deixis (that is, how close or how far away the antecedent is). Closeness and distance within a text are signalled with demonstrative pronouns such as this and these (for close reference) and that and those (for more distal reference). The pronoun those is also used for pronouns that should to be distinguished from each other:
Egyptians hieroglyphics were in use for 3000 years and contained three types of symbols: those representing objects or ideas; those which represented consonant sounds; and those used to differentiate identical symbols.
Referentiality can work in different directions. All our examples so far have been examples of anaphoric reference or reference backwards to the preceding antecedent. It is also possible to have cataphoric reference which is directed forwards to text which is ahead:
Mankind's earliest scribal practices were lines, dots and hatch marks cut into stone. bone or wood using a stone flint. This repertoire expanded with the use of colouring agents and brushes made from animal hair. At first drawings were of human body parts or animals seen when hunting.
The process of parchment making used sheep, goat or calf skin, scraped clean of wool or hair and smoothed with pumice stone. Then, the skins were washed, dressed with chalk and finished with a lime-based wash.
Reference can also be made outside the text. This is called exophoric reference. A referenced citation is a typical example of exophoric reference:
So writing at tertiary level is more about "displaying" your knowledge than about "transmitting" your knowledge. (Swales & Feak 1994)
As seen above, anaphoric reference is reference backwards in a text to an antecedent or previous word. But the antecedent of an anaphoric pronoun need not be a particular person or thing referred to in the text, it can be a whole idea or previous phrase or sentence:
Books were also produced on topics other than religion and texts began to appear in the vernacular, ie, the local languages rather than exclusively in Latin. This meant that the middle classes now also had access to literature
Detailed tracing of signs gave way to a system of lines and wedges initially made with a cut reed. This resulted in the schematisation of symbols to produce cuneiform writing.
So far our examples of coreferentiality have used a simple pronoun (it, that, these etc). Coreferential links within a text can also be made by linking whole phrases with definite articles (the) and demonstrative articles (this, these etc):
Egyptian hieroglyphics were replaced by a new alphabet at the beginning of the Christian era. The Coptic alphabet contained 24 letters from the Greek alphabet and additional notations for sounds not in Greek.
Mankind's earliest scribal practices were lines, dots and hatch marks cut into stone, bone or wood using a stone flint. This repertoire expanded with use of colouring agents and brushes made from animal hair. superordinate category
d) Ellipsis
Ellipsis involves the deletion of redundant information. However, this information must still be recoverable through association with earlier text:
Cuneiform script was used for over 2000 years by a number of different cultures (Sumarians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Hittites) but _ disappeared towards the beginning of the Christian era.
d) Substitution
Substitution involves a word or phrase being replaced with another word (not lexically related):
The Etruscans, early inhabitants of Italy, adopted the Greek alphabet and changed it to suit their repertoire of sounds and likewise the Romans who came to power after the Etruscans.
Evidence of different writing systems have been found on the island of Crete. The first survives on a few stone seals. vases and clay tablets. The second consists of 84 signs, ideograms and marks which seem to be numbers. This is known as Linear A. The third is the famous Linear B deciphered by Ventris and Chadwick in the 1940s.
