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demonstrate and exemplify a specific grammatical rule, the sentence
restrictively functions as a purely grammatical pattern definable at
the level of syntax; the ultimate goal of the sentence being to
instruct its recipients on how to construct syntactic relationships
between its constituent elements. The text, on the other hand, cannot
exist, nor survive, in a socio-cultural vacuum. It is motivated, and
hence inextricably related to, a situation of occurrence which is
called 'context'. Unlike the sentence, the text is not an abstract,
decontexualized entity definable only at the level of syntax. On the
contrary, its viability derives from its close affinity with its
pertinent situational context wherein it is only interpretable. In
addition, the text is conceived and actualized within a 'co-text' which
Halliday (1985, p5) describes as "the non-verbal goings-on-the total
environment in which the text unfolds." While the sentence is used to
instruct its recipients about building syntactic relationships and
hence has a limited role in humansituations, the text motivates its
consumers to control, manage, and eventually change human situations.
Another distinction between the sentence and the text/discourse
ushers in the psychological factor. Sentence formation is easily
manageable once syntactic relationships between the constituent
elements of the sentence pattern are fully established. A theory of
sentences is justified in considering as 'irrelevant' such factors as
"memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest,
and so on". (de Beaugrande, 1980, p14) These psychological factors
are more relevant to the text if we view the text, basically, as a
linguistic manifestation of a pre-conceived mental picture of reality
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