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The Rheme 193
с тарик. In each case the word (or the part of the sentence) which comes last corresponds to the rheme, and the rest of the sentence to the theme. It is quite clear that no such variation would be possible in a corresponding English sentence. For instance we could not, in the sentence The old man came in, change the order of words so as to make the words the old man (the subject of the sentence) correspond to the rheme instead of to the theme. Such a word order would be impossible and we cannot make the words old man express the rheme without introducing further changes into the structure of the sentence.
In Modern English there are several ways of showing that a word or phrase corresponds either to the rheme or to the theme. We will consider the rheme first.
A method characteristically analytical and finding its parallel in French is the construction it is ... that (also it is ... who and it is... which) with the word or phrase representing the rheme enclosed between the words it is and the word that (who, which). Here are some examples of the construction: For it is the emotion that matters. (HUXLEY) Emotion is in this way shown to represent the rheme of the sentence. But it was sister Janet's house that he considered his home. (LINKLATER) Sister Janet's house represents the rheme.
In the following sentence the adverbial modifier of place, here, is thus made the rheme, and the sentence is further complicated by the addition of a concessive though-clause. It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed hot, dry perfume instead of air — it was here that Mr Scogan elected to sit. (HUXLEY) Without this special method of pointing out the rheme, it would be hardly possible to show that the emphasis should lie on the word here. In the variant Mr Scogan liked to sit here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed hot, dry perfume instead of air the emphasis would rather lie on the word liked: he liked it, though it was shadeless, etc.
Could it be, he mused, that the reliable witness he had prayed for when kneeling before the crippled saint, the mirror able to retain what it reflected like the one with the dark, gilded eagle spread above it before him now, were at fault in so far as they recorded all the facts when it was, after all, possibly something at another level that more crucially mattered?___(BUECHNER) The phrase emphasised by means of the it is ... that construction is, of course, something at another level. The peculiarity of this example is that two parentheses, after all and possibly, come in within the frame of it is ... that.
In the following example a phrase consisting of no less than eleven words is made into the rheme by means of the it is ... that construction. It was his use of the highly colloquial or simply the
7 Б. A. Ильиш
194 Functional Sentence Perspective
ungrammatical expression that fascinated her in particular, for in neither case, clearly, did he speak in such a manner out of ignorance of the more elegant expression but, rather, by some design. (BUECHNER)As the that is far away from the is, it seems essential that nothing should intervene between them to confuse the construction, and, more especially, no other that should appear there.
The question of the grammatical characteristic of such sentences will be dealt with in Chapter XXXV (p. 276) and Chapter XXXVII (p. 302).
Another means of pointing out the rheme in a sentence is a particle (only, even, etc.) accompanying the word or phrase in question. Indeed a particle of this kind seems an almost infallible sign of the word or phrase being representative of the rheme, as in the sentence: Only the children, of whom there were not many, appeared aware and truly to belong to their surroundings, for the over-excited games they played, dashing in and out among the legs of their elders, trying to run up the escalator that moved only down, and the like, were after all special games that could be played nowhere but in the station by people who remembered that it was in the station they were. (BUECHNER) The particle only, belonging as it does to the subject of the sentence, the children, singles it out and shows it to represent the rheme of the sentence.
It goes without saying that every particle has its own lexical meaning, and, besides pointing out the rheme, also expresses a particular shade of meaning in the sentence. Thus, the sentences Only he came and Even he came are certainly not synonymous, though in both cases the subject he is shown to represent the rheme by a particle referring to it.
'Another means of indicating the rheme of a sentence may sometimes be the indefinite article. Whether this is a grammatical or lexical means is open to discussion. The answer will depend on the general view we take of the articles, a problem we have been considering in Chapter IV. Treating the article here in connection with functional sentence perspective is justified, as it does play a certain part in establishing the relations between the grammatical structure of a sentence and its functional perspective.
Owing to its basic meaning of "indefiniteness" the indefinite article will of course tend to signalise the new element in the sentence, that which represents the rheme. By opposition, the definite article will, in general, tend to point out that which is already known, that is, the theme. We will make our point clear by taking an example with the indefinite article, and putting the definite article in its place to see what consequence that change will produce in the functional sentence perspective.
Let us take this sentence: Suddenly the door opened and a little birdlike elderly woman in a neat grey skirt and coat seemed almost
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