Reference in Mary's Sura within Halliday and Hasan’s Framework of Cohesion

Abstract

Cohesion describes the ways in which words of the sentences of a text, are mutually connected grammatically and lexically. Reference is a cohesive device related to grammatical cohesion. It is concerned with the introduction of a new item in the text and the subsequent reference to that item by means of another one. The main tools of reference are pronouns, demonstratives, and comparatives. The present study aims at identifying the types of reference found in Mary’s Sura in the Glorious Qura’an. In order to achieve the aims of the study, Halliday and Hasan’s framework (1976) of cohesion is used. It is hypothesized that: i) Personal reference is the most frequent type used in Mary’s Sura , and ii)Anaphoric reference is more commonly employed than cataphoric reference in Mary’s Sura. The different forms of reference in this text are extracted, tabulated and classified according to their types and sub-types. It is found that this Qura’anic text draws more heavily on the use of personal reference instances with (85%). It is also noticed that anaphoric reference is used more than catophoric reference with (97.5%) in this Sura.