The theory of the actual division of the sentence

The theory of the actual division of the sentence

Besides the nominative aspect of the semantics of the sentence, which reflects the situation named with its various components, the sentence expresses predicative semantics, which reflects various relations between the nominative content of the sentence and reality. One of the first attempts to analyze linguistically the contextually relevant communicative semantics of the sentence was undertaken by the scholars of the Prague Lingistic Circle at the beginning of the 20th century. The Czech linguist Vilém Mathesius was the first to describe the informative value of different parts of the sentence in the actual process of communication, making the informative perspective of an utterance and showing which component of the denoted situation is informationally more important from the point of view of the speaker. By analogy with the grammatical, or nominative division of the sentence the idea of the so-called “actual division” of the sentence was put forward. This linguistic theory is known as the functional analysis of the sentence, the communicative analysis, the actual division analysis, or the informative perspective analysis [1,45].

The main components of the actual division of a sentence are the theme and the rheme. The theme (originally called “the basis” by V. Mathesius) is the starting point of communication, a thing or a phenomenon about which something is reported in the sentence; it usually contains some old, “already known” information. The rheme (originally called “the nucleus” by V. Mathesius) is the basic informative part of the sentence, its contextually relevant communicative center, the “peak” of communication, or the information reported about the theme; it usually contains some new information. There may be transitional parts of actual division of various degrees of informative value, neither purely thematic, nor rhematic; they can be treated as a secondary rheme, the “subrhematic” part of a sentence; this part is called “a transition” (this idea was put forward by another scholar of the Prague Linguistic Circle, J. Firbas). For example: Again Bob is coming late. – Again (transition) Bob (theme) is coming late (rheme). The rheme is the obligatory informative component of a sentence, there may be sentences which include only the rheme; the theme and the transition are optional [1,67].

The theory of actual division of the sentence is connected with the logical analysis of the proposition. The principal parts of the proposition are the logical subject and the logical predicate; these two parts correlate with the theme and the rheme of the sentence respectively. Logical analysis deals with the process of thinking and the actual division reveals the corresponding lingual means of rendering the informative content in the process of communication[2,55]. The logical subject and the logical predicate, like the theme and the rheme, may or may not coincide, respectively, with the subject and the predicate of the sentence.

When the actual division of the sentence reflects the natural flow of thinking directed from the starting point of communication to its semantic core, from the logical subject to the logical predicate, the theme precedes the rheme and this type of actual division is called “direct”, “unspecialized”, or “unmarked”. In English, with its fixed word order, direct actual division means that the theme coincides with the subject (or the subject group) in the syntactic structure of the sentence, while the rheme coincides with the predicate (the predicate group) of the sentence. The close connection of the actual division of the sentence with the context, which makes it possible to divide the informative parts of the communication into those “already known” by the listener and those “not yet known”, does not mean that the actual division is a purely semantic factor. There are special formal lingual means of expressing the distinction between the meaningful center of the utterance, the rheme, and the starting point of its content, the theme. They are as follows: word order patterns, constructions with introducers, syntactic patterns of contrastive complexes, constructions with articles and other determiners, constructions with intensifying particles, and intonation contours [3,44].

Emphatic identification of the rheme expressed by various nominative parts of the sentence (except for the predicate) is achieved by constructions with the anticipatory ‘it +to be, e.g.: It is Bob who is coming late;

The opposed nominative parts of the sentence are marked as rhematic in sentences with contrastive complexes, e.g.: Bob, not Jack, is absent today.

Articles and other determiners, in accord with their either identifying or generalizing semantics, are used to identify the informative part “already known“, the theme (definite determiners) or the “not yet known” information, the rheme (indefinite determiners). Various intensifying particles, such as only, just, merely, namely, at least, rather than, even, precisely, etc., identify the nominative part of the sentence before which they are used as the rheme.

The major non-verbal means of actual division of the sentence is intonation, especially the stress which identifies the rheme; it is traditionally defined as “logical accent” or “rhematic accent”. Intonation is universal and inseparable from the other means of actual division described above, especially from word-order patterns: in cases of direct actual division (which make up the majority of sentences) the logical stress is focused on the last notional word in the sentence in the predicate group, identifying it as the informative center of the sentence; in cases of reverse actual division, the logical stress may indicate the rheme at the beginning of the utterance [4,66].

To conclude, it should be stated that the actual division of the sentence finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech, but this does not mean that the context should be treated as the factor which makes the speaker arrange the informative perspective of the sentence in a particular way.

References

1. 
   Alvin Leon Ping, Theme and Rheme: An Alternative Account, Peter Lang Bern, 2004, pp. 23-24.
   
2. 
   Katalin E. Kiss, Pioneering theory of information structure, Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Vol. 55. Issue 1-2, pp. 23-40
   
3. 
   М.А.К. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar, Edward Arnold, London, 2004.
   
4. 
   David Crystal, Prosodic features and linguistic theory. The English Tone of Voice. Essays in Intonation. Prosody and Paralanguage,1975, p 21.