Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

2. Actual Division of the Sentence
The actual division of the sentence, called also the "functional sentence
perspective", exposes the informative perspective of the sentence showing what
immediate semantic contribution the sentence parts make to the total information
conveyed by the sentence. The sentence can be divided into two sections – theme
and rheme.
The theme is the part of the proposition that is being talked about
(predicated). The theme expresses the starting point of communication; it means
that it denotes an object or a phenomenon about which something is reported. Once
stated, the theme is therefore "old news", i.e. the things already mentioned and
understood.
The predicate that gives information on the topic is called rheme. The
rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication,
emphasizing its contextually relevant centre. Between the theme and the rheme
are positioned intermediary, transitional parts of the actual division of various
degrees of informative value (these parts are sometimes called "transition").
The theme of the actual division of the sentence may or may not coincide
with the subject of the sentence. The rheme of the actual division, in its turn, may
or may not coincide with the predicate of the sentence — either with the whole
predicate group or its part, such as the predicative, the object, the adverbial.
The theme need not necessarily be something known in advance. In many
sentences it is, in fact, something already familiar, as in some of our examples,
especially with the definite article. However, that need not always be the case.
There are sentences in which the theme, too, is something mentioned for the first
time and yet it is not the centre of the predication. It is something about which a
statement is to be made. The theme is here the starting point of the sentence, not its
conclusion.