An Analysis of Grammatical Cohesion as Found in The Three Fairy Tales By Hans Christian Andersen

Abstract

Cohesion is part of system language. Cohesion is a linking medium that holds some
events and ideas together within a text that gives its meaning. In means that cohesion is
necessary in terms of communication since it is a part of language system. Cohesion does not
only occur in communication between people but also occur in communicating ideas through
literary work such as short story. The three short stories The Tinder Box, A Rose From
Homer’s Grave, and The Princess And The Pea written by Hans Christian Andersen are
interesting subject to be researched in terms of grammatical cohesion in those three short
stories and those give good moral values.
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 299) have defined the general meaning of cohesion as the
continuity that exists between one part of the text and another. It is functioned as a unity that
unites the sentence. Cohesion is used to link one part of a text to another part of the same
text. It has functions as a tie to link one sentence to another for indicates the relationship
between the sentences. Cohesion is constituted by the text, texture, and ties. A text is a unit of
language. People can see the intention or the messages through the text. Haliday & Hasan
(1976: 1), stated “the word text is used in linguistics to refer any passage, spoken or written,
of whatever length, that does form unified whole”. It can be said that people communicate by
using text. A text could be narration, dialogue, prose, conversation, story etc. Texts are
formed by grammatical units such as words, sentences, and clauses. These units connect the
parts of a sentence or a clause. Then, Texture does exist in every text. In other word, every
text has texture. According to Haliday & Hasan (1976:2) “the concept of a texture is entirely
appropriate to express the property of being a text”. It means that every written text and
passages has a texture in order to make the text more alive. It also means the texture has a
function to make a text has more sense. Meanwhile, Ties is a term of a texture in the text. The
function of the ties is to make a sentence continuity. By looking the term, people can analyze
the ties in the text. It can be said that ties is a cohesive property.
Halliday & Hasan (1976) have divided cohesion into two, namely grammatical and
lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion refers to the linguistic structure. “The highest
structural unit in the grammar is the sentence” (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 28). The structure
determines the order in which grammatical elements exist and the way they are related within
a sentence. Meanwhile, the lexical cohesion comes about through the selection of items that
are related in some way to those that have gone before (Halliday, 1985: 310). Types of lexical
cohesion are repetition, synonymy and collocation. The main focus of the study was the
grammatical cohesion in order to find the types of grammatical cohesion and forms of
grammatical cohesion in the three short stories by Hans Christian Andersen.
Furthermore, the grammatical cohesion deals with the structures of the sentence
within the text that can be divided into four headings such as reference, substitution, ellipsis,
and conjunction. Reference is divided into three types: personal, demonstrative, and
comparative reference. Substitution is divided into three such as nominal, verbal, and clausal
substitution. Ellipsis is divided into three,such as nominal, verbal, and clausal ellipsis.
Conjunction is divided into four such as additive, adversative, causal, and temporal
conjunction. Meanwhile, the forms of grammatical cohesion are divided into the personal
pronoun, possessive adjective, comparative adjective, demonstrative determiners, omission,
one/ones, and conjunctions.
This research employed descriptive qualitative research that refers to the meaning,
the definition or analogy or model characterizing something, (Maneen, 1983:32). It is done
by collecting data that were taken by the three short stories by Hans Christian Andersen; The
Tinder Box, A Rose From Homer’s Grave, and The Princess And The Pea based on Halliday
and Hasan theory. The Tinder Box is a story about a soldier who acquires a magic tinderbox
that capable of summoning three powerful dogs to do his bidding, A Rose from Homer’s
Grave also talks about the courage, while The Princess and the Pea gives moral value about
appearances can be deceiving. In collecting the data the writer used note taking technique.
Reading and understanding carefully short stories to find the grammatical cohesion and
collecting the grammatical cohesion from the data and then classified into the types of
grammatical cohesion and forms of grammatical cohesion. Then, analysed the data from the
short story by giving the markers of the sentences used as grouped into the grammatical
cohesion and classified into types of the grammatical cohesion. Then, the writer used a
technique of Miles Ana Huberman (1994) to display the data. Next, the writer displayed of
data in the form of tables, charts, networks, and other graphical formats is essential. And then
giving explanations and giving presentation. The writer used two methods in representing the
results of data analysis which are formal and informal method. The formal method is a
method of presenting the data by doing signs, symbols, and table while the informal method
is a method of presenting the data by using words. Last, the writer drew conclusions.
The result of this study are divided into two parts, types and forms of grammatical
cohesion. The writer found that there are 626 data for the types of grammatical cohesion and
626 data for the forms of grammatical cohesion. It is found that for the types, there are 427
data for reference, 14 data for substitution, 8 data for ellipsis, and 177 data for conjunction.
For the forms, it is found that 247 data for personal pronoun, 76 data for possessive adjective,
8 data for comparative adjective, 96 data for demonstrative determiners, 14 data for one/ones,
8 data for omission, and 177 data for conjuncts.
Keywords: cohesion, types of grammatical cohesion, forms of grammatical cohesion