Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
65
positioned intermediary, transitional parts of the information, sometimes called the “transi-
tion.”
On the other hand, the theme-rheme division of the sentence is connected with its infor-
mative dynamism. It is the case when the speaker assumes that some of the information, he or 
she is communicating, is 
new
as it is the information they are introducing for the first time. 
This implies that part of the information in the sentence is not new as it is already shared by 
the communicants from the context at the time the sentence is uttered. This shared or 
“given”
piece of information is represented by the theme while the new information is introduced by 
the rheme. Therefore, the theme can be defined as the starting point of the utterance about 
which something is reported and which is known in the given situation, or at least can be 
gathered from the previous context, while the rheme is regarded as something new the speaker 
says about the theme.
The relationship between the communicative (i.e. actual) and the syntactic divisions of 
the sentence. In English, due to the fixed word-order, the actual division of the sentence into 
the theme and the rheme mostly coincides with its syntactic division: the theme coincides with 
the subject of the sentence, while the rheme coincides either with the whole predicate group or 
its parts, such as the predicative, the object, the adverbial. This kind of actual division when the 
communicative structure of the sentence coincides with its grammatical (i.e. syntactic) 
structure, is referred to as “direct actual division”.
Consider, for example, the following sentences of various emotional character, which be-
long to this type of communicative structure:
Max bounded forward. Again Charlie is being too clever!
Her advice can’t be of any help to us. 
In the first of the above sentences the theme coincides with the subject - 
Max
, while the 
rheme coincides with the whole predicate group – 
bounded forward
. In the second sentence 
the adverbial introducer 
again
can be characterized as a transitional, or informationally 
intermediary element between the theme (
Charlie
) and the rheme, the latter being represented 
by the rest of the predicative group expressed by the intensified predicative 
too clever
. In the 

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
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