Lexical Chains

Verbs, adjectives, and nouns are often chained throughout a text creating a rich texture of lexical cohesion See the glossary definition . Often the chain consists of the same word (for example the adjective "complex" in the text below). In this case the cohesion is simple lexical repetition (reiteration See the glossary definition). There may be words from the same lexical set See the glossary definition (for example "pizza" and "slice"). In this case the cohesive strength comes from collocation See the glossary definition or go to the Understanding Collocation page. Sometimes cohesion occurs through the use of a synonymSame meaning. See the glossary definition ("reaction" and "process") or even an antonymOpposite meaning. See the glossary definition ("complex" and "simple"). Texts may also contain superordinate See the glossary definition terms (glutamate is a type of compound; "compound" is a superordinate term).

The text in the animation below is dense with various types of lexical cohesion, as many texts are. Texts written by students of English as a second language tend to be less cohesive in this sense, possibly because their vocabulary level is not rich enough, or because they tend to use odd collocations See the glossary definition or go to the Understanding Collocation page. Improvement can only come by reading a lot and reading widely.