Actual division of a sentence. The theme and Rheme.
Actual division of the sentence, or functional sentence perspective, refers to the communicative properties of sentences. According to this theory the sentence is divided into two parts. Theme is the part of the sentence which contains a starting point of the statement. Rheme is the other part of the sentence containing the new information for the sake of which the sentence has been uttered or written.
The relation between the syntactic structure of the sentence and its actual division is a very important linguistic problem. The means of expressing a thematic or a rhematic quality of a word or phrase in a sentence depend on the grammatical structure of the given language. In a language with a developed morphological structure and free word-order, the word-order is effectively used to show the difference between theme and rheme. The word order plays a very important part in the communicative structure of Russian sentences. Cf.: Женщина села на скамейку — На скамейку села женщина. In each sentence the last word corresponds to a rheme. No such variation would be possible in the corresponding English sentence: The woman sat on the bench.
In Modern English there are several specific ways of showing that a word or phrase corresponds to the rheme.
1. The grammatical construction “…It is …which/that/who” is used for the representation of the rheme enclosed between the two components, e. g. It is our disagreement that matters in the long run.
2. The subject or any other sentence member can be made a rheme by means of intonation, cf.: Mary was playing the piano at the ‘moment'. ‘Mary’ was playing the piano at the moment. Mary was ‘playing the piano’ at the moment.
3. Another means of pointing out the rheme in the sentence is the intensifying particle (just, even, only, etc), followed by the word in question, e. g. It is only a suggestion. Even he came.
4. The subject put at the end of the sentence becomes rhematic, which is typical of the existential sentences, e. g. And there came some new information from the expert.
5. Another means of indicating the rheme of a sentence may be the indefinite article, e. g. There is a problem.
There are also some means of showing up the theme in the English sentence:
1. This can be achieved by using the definite article, e. g. The idea was good.
2. The loose parenthesis introduced by the phrase As to / As for produces the so-called double subject focusing on the theme, e. g. As for the others, they were not eager to interfere.
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3. Some scholars also believe that any notional constituent placed at the beginning of the sentence is made its theme, e. g.: All that Dr Roberts found in the reference books; Next morning we are leaving for Boston.
Many problems concerning the actual division of the sentence have not been solved yet. In particular, it is not certain that every sentence necessarily consists of the two parts: theme and rheme. In some cases there are supposed to be intermediate elements. Jan Firbas in his analysis of English functional sentence perspective pointed out these intermediate elements and described their function as a transition zone.
The problem of functional sentence perspective, which appears to be one of the essential problems of modern linguistic study, requires further careful investigation before a complete theory of all phenomena belonging to this sphere can be worked out. The main principles and starting points have, however, been clarified to a degree sufficient to make such future studies fruitful and promising.
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