Term Relationships and their Contribution to Text Semantics and Information Literacy through Lexical Cohesion

An analysis of linguistic approaches to determining the lexical cohesion in text reveals differences in the types of lexical semantic relations (term relationships) that contribute to the continuity of lexical meaning in the text. Differences were also found in how these lexical relations join words together, sometimes with grammatical relations, to form larger groups of related words that sometimes exhibit a more tightly-knit internal structure than a simple chain of words. Further analysis of the lexical semantic relations indicates a specific need to focus on a neglected group of relations, referred to as nonclassical relations, and a general need to focus on relations in the context of text. Experiments with human readers of text are suggested to investigate these issues, as well as address the lack of research that uses human subjects to identify reader-oriented relations. Because lexical cohesion contributes to the semantic understanding of text, these reader-oriented relations have potential relevance to improving access to text-based information. As well, the structured groups of words formed using a combination of lexical and grammatical relations has potential computational benefits to lexical cohesion analysis of text.