Vilm Mathesius and Functional Sentence Perspective, and beyond

Eva Hajiov
Charles University in Prague

Terminological profusion and confusion, and underlying

conceptual vagueness, plague the relevant literature to a point
where little may be salvageable.
Levinson, 1983, p.x (quoted from Lambrecht 1994)

1. Motivation and the aim of the contribution

The aim of the present contribution is to demonstrate that Levinsons harsh statement upon
the address of the literature on theme-rheme or whatever terms are used is unjust, both from
the historical as well as the present-day state-of-the art point of view. Inspite of the
undisputable fact that there is a superficial terminological mish-mash in the field (one can
find such terms or dichotomies as psychological subject and psychological predicate,
movement of ideas, Functional Sentence Perspective, Theme-Rheme, Topic-Comment,
Topic-Focus, Topic-Focus Articulation, Presupposition and Focus, Permissible range of
focus, Information Structure, Information-bearing Structure, Background Focus,
Rhematizers, Focalizers, Focusing particles, Association with Focus and several others), the
basic idea underlying the relevant inquiries is quite sound and appropriate. In our contribution
we want to reduce at least some of the seemingly conceptual vagueness by an attempt to
compare the basic starting points and main contributions of four stages or directions: (i).
psychologically oriented 19th century insights (Sect. 2), (ii) structurally oriented and
systematic contribution of Vilm Mathesius (Sect. 3), (iii) the follow-up and development of
the theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) by Jan Firbas et al. (Sect. 4), and (iv) the
theory of topic-focus articulation ( TFA) as developed within theoretical and formal
linguistics by Petr Sgall et al. (Sect. 5). In the latter section, we briefly sketch possibilities that
are offered by the present development of computational (and corpus-based) linguistics for
testing the linguistic theories and for their further developments. Finally, in Section 6, we
offer a schematic comparison of the three Czech approaches to information structure
discussed in our contribution.

2.

Pioneering psychologically oriented studies

One of the first - if not the very first comprehensive studies in what may be now called
information structure of the sentence was H.Weils (1844; English translation 1887)
monograph on the order of words. According to Weil, Words are the signs of ideas; to treat of
the order of words is, then, in a measure, to treat of the order of ideas (p. 11, quoted from the
1887 English translation). The author recognizes two types of the movement of ideas:
marche parallle and progression: If the initial notion is related to the united notion of the

preceding sentence, the march of the two sentences is to some extent parallel; if it is related to
the goal of the sentence which precedes, there is a progression in the march of the discourse
(p. 41). He also noticed a possibility of a reverse order called by him pathetic: When the
imagination is vividly impressed, or when the sensibilities of the soul are deeply stirred, the
speaker enters into the matter of his discourse at the goal. (p. 45). Weils study was not left
unnoticed by Vilm Mathesius (1907), who refers to him (though mistakenly by the date
1855), and to linguists around Zeitschrift fr Vlkerpsychologie, such as Georg v.d.
Gabelentz (1868), Hermann Paul (1886), and esp. Ph. Wegener (1885) but criticizes this
approach for the terms psychological subject and psychological predicate. Mathesius
himself prefers to characterize the relevant issues by their relation to the factual situation from
which the utterance originates using therefore the Czech (untranslatable) term aktuln
lenn (literally: the topical articulation).

3. Vilm Mathesius and his approach

In his criticism of the psychologically based studies, Mathesius (1939, but referring back to
his 1907 study) differentiates between the formal and the topical articulation of the
sentence: while the former structure concerns the composition of the sentence from
grammatical elements (its basic elements being the grammatical subject and the grammatical
predicate), the basic elements of the topical structure are the starting point (Cz. vchodit)
of the utterance (referred to by J. Firbas as the initial point, and by J. Vachek as the basis), i.e.
what is in the given situation known or at least evident and from what the speaker starts, and
the nucleus, (Cz. jdro), that is what the speaker says about or with respect to the starting
point. The initial point of the utterance is often its theme, but not necessarily so. It should be
noticed that these two aspects of the initial point are reflected in the distinction made by M.
A. K. Halliday between the thematic structure (theme rheme) and the information structure
(given - new) of the sentence, see Halliday 1970 , pp. 160ff.; Halliday characterizes the theme
as the peg on which the message is hung, p. 161; he further says that in E. theme is put in
first position of the sentence.)
Mathesius in his criticism of different contemporary approaches to Czech word order prefers
to speak about basis and nucleus rather than about known and unknown information
(Mathesius 1941). Already in this paper, Mathesius notices that the initial point of the
utterance, its basis, may contain more than a single element; the centre of the theme is that
element which is the most topical one and the rest of the thematic elements are
accompanying elements (Cz. jevy prvodn) that lead from the center to the nucleus. In
Mathesius views, the predicate is a part of the nucleus but on its edge rather than in its center
and represents a transition (pechod) between the two parts of the utterance.The first sentence
of a text can be non-articulated, it may contain only the nucleus and accompanying elements.
From this point of view, according to Mathesius, the word order in Czech serves for
distinguishing various degrees of importance (zvanost, dleitost) of the elements of the
same sentence. However, if the speaker is very much captured by the nucleus, s/he then does
not pay respect to the natural ordering from known to unknown and s/he puts the nucleus on
the first position of the sentence. Such an ordering is then called by Mathesius a subjective
order, in contrast to the natural, objective one. Summarizing Mathesius stimuli, the
following points emerge as important for the future investigations:
(i)

Mathesius procedes from functional needs to formal means that satisfy them.

(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)

The dichotomy is based on the distinction between Basis Nucleus (Theme

Rheme) rather than on the distinction of known and unknown.
The notion of aboutness is introduced.
The functional articulation of the sentence is seen as a more articulated (the
notions of transition and accompanying elements) rather than as a mere
dichotomy.
First sentence of the text may be composed only of the nucleus together with the
accompanying elements.
Objective (natural) order is distinguished from the subjective one.

4. Functional sentence perspective (Jan Firbas and the Brno School)

Since Mathesius Czech term aktuln lenn vtn is not directly translatable into English,
Jan Firbas, the direct follower of Mathesius in the study of this domain on the advice of
Josef Vachek (Firbas 1992, p. xii) and apparently inspired by Mathesius use of the German
term Satzperspektive in his fundamental paper from 1929 - coins the term functional sentence
perspective (FSP in the sequel). Firbas abandons the idea of strict dichotomy and works first
with a triad theme transition rheme. His introduction of the notion of transition is
basically motivated by the function of the modal and temporal elements of the sentence
(Firbas 1965). Firbas then passes over to a more gradual view namely to the concept of (a
hierarchy of) communicative dynamism (CD in the sequel). He writes: By the degree or
amount of CD carried by a linguistic element, I understand the extent to which the element
contributes to the development of communication, to which, as it were, itpuhes the
communication forward (Firbas 1971, 135-136). Based on this notion, the theme is viewed
(p. 141; cf. already 1964, p. 272) as constituted by an element or elements carrying the
lowest degree(s) of CD within a sentence. It should be added that Firbas (1992, p.93)
corrects this definition referring explicitly (p. 72) to Petr Sgalls objection (presented in
1976 at the conference in Sofia that such a specification would imply that every sentence has
a theme, which is not necessarily so, esp. with sentences opening a text) in the sense that
theme need not be implemented, while in every sentence there must be rheme proper and
transition proper. In his survey of the Czech(oslovak) approaches to FSP Firbas (1974) states
that the basic distribution of CD would reflect what H. Weil called the movement of the
mind; Svoboda (2007) suggests that the degrees of CD can be viewed as degrees of
communicative importance (sdln zvanost) from the point of view of the intention of the
speaker.
According to Jan Firbas and all of his followers there are four factors of FSP that work in
interaction: (1) Linear arrangement (surface word order), (2) Semantics (in the sense of the
semantic character of a linguistic element as well as the character of its semantic relations,
Firbas 1992, p. 41ff.), (3) Context, and (4) Prosody. A certain hierarchy is assumed (in the
reverse order) for these factors the highest position of which is occupied by the prosodic
factor and the lowest by the ,linear arrangement. The weight of these factors may differ for
different languages.
Another notion important for the FSP theory is the notion of context dependence: the criterion
is based on actual presence of an element in , or its absence from, the immediately relevant
context (Firbas 1992, 37).

Two scales of dynamic semantic functions performed by context-independent elements are

postulated: a presentation scale (Setting Presentation of Phenomenon Phenomenon
presented) and a quality scale (Setting - Bearer of Quality - Quality Specification and
Further specification) The semantic functions within these scales are arranged in accordance
with a gradual rise in CD (Firbas 1992, 67).
Closely related to Mathesius notions of objective and subjective order, there are the two
instance levels, namely the first instance and the second instance level. According to Firbas
(1979, see also Firbas 1992, pp. 111ff.) the first instance level can be divided into a basic
instance level on which all carriers of CD are context independent, and an ordinary instance
level, when one or more carriers of CD are dependent on the immediate relevant context.
This brief account of the FSP theory is meant just to introduce the basic notions employed and
is far from being fully exhaustive. It should also be mentioned that Jan Firbas has found a
large number of followers, who have made substantive contributions both to the overall
conception as well as to several particular points. Its basic approach was followed also by
Frantiek Dane (1974) in his development of the idea of thematic progressions (akin to
Weils progressions of ideas) and in his pioneering description of Czech intonation with
respect to the theme-rheme structure. A prominent Czech anglicist Libue Dukov focussed
her attention in several of her syntactic writings (e.g. 1999) and also in her comprehensive
contrastive grammar of English (1988) on a comparison of the function and the means of
expresssion of FSP in English and Czech. Several detailed studies of Czech word order with
respect to FSP have been published by Ludmila.Uhlov (e.g. 1974; 1987).
Among Firbas direct students, the main role was played by Ale Svoboda (2007), who
elaborated further the theory of FSP with respect to a more detailed hierarchization of the
sentence elements within the so-called distributional fields (Svoboda 1968) and with his
introduction of the notion of diatheme as a specific element standing between theme proper
and transition in the CD hierarchy (Svoboda 1981). An important continuation of Firbas
insights concerning the relation between FSP and intonation is found in the work of Jana
Chamonikolasov (2007) and also in her habilitation (in press), in which she gives in the
context of spoken English dialogue - a well-informed and deep comparison of FSP and TFA;
in this monograph as well in her previous studies (2010) Chamonikolasov pays a due respect
to the communicative aspects of FSP.
5. Topic-Focus Articulation (Petr Sgall and the Prague School)
Though there are several similarities between FSP and the theory of topicfocus articulation
(TFA) as proposed in the sixties of the last century by Petr Sgall and then elaborated by him
and his followers (Sgall 1967; Sgall et al. 1973; Sgall et al. 1980; Sgall et al. 1986; Hajiov,
Partee and Sgall 1998), TFA is not a mere translation or rephrasing of the term FSP; a
different term is used with the intention to indicate certain differences in the starting points,
which can be summarized as follows:
(a) Firbas (1964) defined the theme as the element (or elements) carrying the lowest degree
of communicative dynamism within the sentence; as already mentioned above, such a
definition would imply that every sentence has an item with a lowest degree of
communicative dynamism and would exclude the existence of sentences without a theme, the
so-called topicless sentences. (But see above in Sect. 4 on Firbas correction of the original
definition). Instead, the term topic of the sentence is used in TFA to refer to that part of the

sentence that the sentence is about, which does not exclude hot-news sentences, i.e.
sentences which bring the addressee straight into the deep water of the news.
(b) In the same vein as in FSP, the TFA theory assumes that every item in the sentence carries
a certain degree of communicative dynamism, but it is still the basic dichotomy between the
topic of the sentence and its focus conveying an information about its topic that plays an
important role, especially with respect to the semantic interpretation of negation and its
relation to presuppositions of the sentence (see examples supporting this argument below).
(c) The TFA supporters argue that there is an important difference in the nature of the four
factors distinguished by FSP, namely that of linear arrangement, prosody, semantics and
contexts. The first two belong to the means of expression of information structure and the
other two to its functional layers.
(d) TFA is claimed to be a structure belonging to the underlying, deep syntactic structure of
sentences because the differences in TFA are semantically relevant.
From the point of view of theoretical linguistics, it is of primary importance that the Praguian
TFA theory is the first attempt to integrate the description of what was later more broadly
referred to as the information structure of the sentence into a formal description of language.
(Sgall 1967; 1979; from a more general viewpoint cf. 2009). The basic tenets of the TFA are
as follows:
(i)The dichotomy of the topic of the sentence and the focus of the sentence is specified as a
bipartition of the sentence into what the sentence is ABOUT (its topic) and what the sentence
says about the topic (its focus), in other words, the border line lies between what we are
talking about and what we are saying about it. TFA is understood as a linguistic rather than
a cognitive structuring; the bi-partition is based on the given- new strategy, but not identical to
this cognitive dichotomy, as illustrated by the following examples (the assumed position of
the intonation center is denoted by capitals):
(1) John and Mary entered the DINING-ROOM. They looked from the WINDOW (and ).
(2) Mary called Jim a REPUBLICAN. Then he insulted HER.
(3) Mary called Jim a REPUBLICAN. Then he INSULTED her.
In the second sentence of (1), it is evident that the speaker means the window of the room,
which can be characterized as an old piece of information; however, the reference to it is
placed in the focus of the sentence: the speaker is telling about them what they did. In the
second sentences of (2) and (3), both Jim and Mary are (cognitively) known since they are
referred to in the first sentence, but only (3) is linguistically structured as being about both of
them and the information in focus is the event of insulting. In (2), Mary is put into focus, as a
target of Jims insult. In addition, at least on the preferred reading, (2) implies that calling
somebody a Republican is an insult. This interpretation is supported by the different
intonation patterns of (2) and (3), as indicated by the capitals.
(ii) The semantic relevance of TFA can be best documented by the relationships between TFA
and the semantics of negation. If in terms of the aboutness relation, the Focus holds about the
Topic, then in the prototypical case of negative sentences, the Focus does not hold about the
Topic; in a secondary case, the negative sentence is about a negated topic and something is
said about this topic.

(4) John didnt come to watch TV.

Prototypically, the sentence (4) is about John (topic) and it holds about John, that he didnt
come to watch TV (negated focus). However, there may be a secondary interpretation of a
negative sentence, e.g. in a context of (5).
(5) John didnt come, because he suddenly fell ill.
One of the interpretations of (5) in terms of TFA is that the sentence is about Johns notcoming (topic) and it says about this negated event that is happened because he suddenly fell
ill (focus).
As Hajiov (e.g. 1973; 1984) documented, there is a close relation between TFA, negation
and presupposition (see already the original analysis of presupposition as a specific kind of
the entailment relation by Strawson 1952):
(6)(a) John caused our VICTORY.
(b) John didnt cause our VICTORY.
(c) Though he played well as usually, the rest of the team was very weak (and nothing
could have prevented our defeat).
(7)(a) Our victory was caused by JOHN.
(b) Our victory was not caused by JOHN.
Both (6)(a) and (7)(a) imply that we won. However, it is only the negative counterpart of (7)
(a), namely (7)(b), that implies that we won, while (6)(b) may appear in a context suggesting
that we were defeated, see (6)(c). In terms of presuppositions, the statement that we won
belongs to the presuppositions of (7) since it is entailed both by the positive as well as by the
negative sentence, but not to the presuppositions of (6) as it is not entailed by the negative
sentence.
Sgall and his colleagues present in their writings (with many references to examples quoted
by other linguists) many convincing examples of pairs of sentences that differ only in their
TFA which leads to the different semantic interpretations; the outer forms of the members of
these pairs may differ in word order, active or passive forms of the verb or intonation patterns,
but the common denominator of these difference is their topic-focus articulation.
(iii) The notion of communicative dynamism is applied in TFA to refer to the underlying
(deep) order of elements of the sentence rather than to the surface order of words; it is
assumed that the deep order of elements in the topic part of the sentence is guided more or
less by contextual criteria (the least communicatively important element comes first, the verb
standing on the boundary between topic and focus) and a rather strong hypothesis is
formulated concerning the deep order of elements in the focus part of the sentence called
systemic ordering: In the focus part of the sentence the complementations of the verb (be
they arguments or adjuncts) follow a certain canonical order (not necessarily the same for all
languages). A tentative list showing the systemic ordering of modifications in Czech (Sgall et
al. 1986, p. 198f) suggests the following order of the main complementations: Actor
Condition when for how long Cause Regard Aim Manner Accompaniment
Locative Means Addressee Origin Objective (Patient) Directional Effect.

This canonical order has been tested with a series of psycholinguistic experiments (with
speakers of Czech, German and English, and more recently also on corpus material which
offers a richer and more consistent data). It is evident that different languages may differ in
some specific points of this order (e.g. in English the assumed order of selected
complementations is Temporal Actor Addressee Objective (Patient) Origin Effect
Manner Accompaniment Directional) but in general, the hypothesis seems to be plausible
and brings an interesting issue for further investigation.
A good test for the TFA theory is offered at present by the annotated electronic corpus of
Czech called Prague Dependency Treebank (PDT, see Haji 1998; Haji et al. 2006), which is
an annotated collection of Czech texts with a mark-up on three layers: (i) morphemic,
(ii) surface shape, and (iii) underlying (tectogrammatical). The current version of PDT
(annotated on all three layers of annotation) includes 3168 documents comprising the total of
49442 sentences (833357 occurrences of forms). The annotation on the tectogrammatical
layer includes an indication of TFA values in terms of contextual boundness: three TFA values
are distinguished, namely t - contextually bound non-contrastive, c contextually bound
contrastive, and f contextually non-bound. On the basis of these values an algorithm was
formulated and fully tested that performs the bipartition of the sentence into its topic and
focus. The hitherto achieved results are encouraging and offer interesting observations: e.g. in
95% of the cases the hypothesis (present also in the FSP theory, see Firbas on the transitional
character of the verb) that in Czech the boundary between Topic and Focus is in the
prototypical case signalled by the position of the verb was confirmed. Also, a comparison of
the results of the automatic procedure with human annotation has revealed that most frequent
differences, if any, concerned the difference in the assignment of the verb to topic or to focus.
This again confirms the transitional character of the verb in Czech.
The existence of a parallel syntactically annotated corpus of English and Czech offers a
further extension of the corpus-based study of TFA, with the multilingual material at hand.

6. A schematic comparison of the three Czech approaches to information structure

of the sentence
To summarize our brief characterization of the three Czech approaches to the information
structure of the sentence, given in the previous sections of our contribution, we present below
an attempt at a comparison of the main tenets of them, starting in the left column by the
original ideas formulated by Vilm Mathesius, and, on the same line in the two following
columns, suggesting the counterparts of these ideas (or comments on them) as reflected in the
FSP (Brno) and TFA (Prague) theories, respectively.
Mathesius

Brno FSP

Prague TFA

from function to form

factors - not clear

basis x nucleus

yes: theme x rheme

function and form

clarly distinguished
yes, topic vs. focus !
semantics relevance

"aboutness"

observed

emphasized, basic

transition

explicit

implicit

accompanying elements

communicative dynamism

communicative dynamism
in 'deep' structure

Svoboda: communicative
importance
"all-rheme"

basic instance level

recognized, "topicless"

subjective order

yes

yes

dynamic semantic function systemic ordering

contextual boundness:
retrievability

basic, primitive notion

This comparison demonstrates that many ideas on what is now more generally called
information structure are already in nuce in Mathesius writings. His stimuli have been
developed fruitfully in Brno, Prague as well as by many scholars from Europe and the US
(sometimes unknowingly re-inventing the wheel, but also often bringing in new aspects and
viewpoints, not to speak about language data from typologically different languages). We also
hope to have demonstrated that a serious examination of what Levinson calls terminological
profusion and confusion, and underlying conceptual vagueness uncovers important issues
and respectable results that have served and will also serve in the future for a deeper analysis
of the communicative function of language. In the context of the conference for which this
contribution has been prepared, it is also important to recall this fruitful resource offered by
Prague English studies to the modern linguistic community.

Acknowledgement
This paper was written under the support of the grant of the Czech Republic Grant Agency
P406/12/0658; in its relevant parts, the author has been using language resources developed and/or
stored and/or distributed by the LINDAT-Clarin project of the Ministry of Education of the Czech
Republic (project LM2010013).

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